Frysztak Ghetto was created in the Polish shtetl of Frysztak during World War II by Nazi Germany and existed until 18 August 1942, when it was liquidated.
Frysztak Ghetto was created in the Polish shtetl of Frysztak during World War II by Nazi Germany and existed until 18 August 1942, when it was liquidated.
At the outbreak of World War II the population of Frysztak was three quarters Jewish with 1,322 people. [1] Major forms of commerce in Frysztak at this time included crafts and farming. [2] The German occupation of the town began on September 8th, 1939 when German soldiers robbed Jewish homes and shops and forcibly conscripted Jews. One week after the occupation of Frysztak began, on Rosh Hashanah, German soldiers set fire to several holy objects and murdered Jewish worshipers in the synagogue. [1] By November 1939, the Germans had incorporated Frysztak into the Generalgouvernment by merging the town with Kreis (sub-district) Jaslo, which was located within Kraków District. [2]
From 1940 to 1943, SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr. Wilhem Raschwitz coordinated the anti-Jewish actions that were in Kreis Jaslo. Under Raschwitz authority was the Grenzpolizeikommissariat (GPK) who were in charge of a unit of German Gendarmerie stationed within Frysztak. [2] The German Gendarmerie were in charge of the Polish police. In 1939, the Germans created a Judenrat consisting of Jewish elders, which they placed under the regional Judenrat of Kreis Jaslo on April 29th, 1940. The Frysztak Judenrat was in charge of its own unit of Jewish police and charged with recruiting Jews between the ages of 15 and 60 for forced labor. [1] In 1940, the Fyrsztak Judenrat was also tasked with the management of refugees from Lodz, Slask, Kraków and surrounding villages. [2] Lastly, it was responsible for distributing food. Deteriorating conditions caused the Judenrat to call upon the Jewish Social Self-Help (JSS) organization to support Frysztaks people who were dangerously close to starvation in 1940. [2] At this time, 283 Jews received material aid while 1,440 received financial assistance. On June 7th, 1941 the JSS set up a branch in Frysztak to not only help Frysztak Jews but extend their support to Jewish communities in Wisniowa and Odrzykon. Ultimately the JSS were only able to provide aid for 325 of the 400 Frysztak Jews that had applied. [2]
Although there was a labor camp located within Frysztak, its population of 2000 were primarily deported from Warsaw. Rather than keep them nearby, the Germans sent Frysztak Jews to four labor camps that surrounded the town. Housed within two synagogues, Jews in the Frysztak camp were forced to do road construction, build a railroad from the village of Wisnica to Stepina, and work on stone quarries located near Czeiswinia. [2] They would sometimes have to walk up to 10 kilometers within a day to reach their job site. [3] A Jewish internal police unit watched over the Frysztak camp, which operated from July 1941 until November of the same year when poor living conditions lead to the typhus outbreak which caused it to close. Germans sent the surviving Jews back to the Warsaw area. [2] Before Germans established the Frysztak ghetto in January 1942, Jews were prohibited from leaving due to fear of spreading disease. [2] This law persisted and became more severe with the Germans threatening death as a consequence for leaving. The ghetto continued to receive refugees from surrounding villages until Germans liquidated the ghetto. Since Jews were unable to leave Frysztak, JSS established a food kitchen, which provided 300 dinners a day, in an attempt to relieve some of the demand for food. [2] Despite their efforts many still went hungry. Other ways in which the JSS attempted to aid Frysztak Jews was to reestablish the town as clothing production center to prevent deportation but unfortunately deportation proceeded when the Kreishauptmann shut done JSS plans for an agricultural training. The first round of deportation consisted of 800 Jews, including men over the age of 52 and women with more than two children, and came after Jews were told to meet in the market by the Frysztak Judenrat. [2]
The fate of the first Jews to be deported from Frysztak was that of mass murder in the Warzyce Forest. The Germans shot the 800 people into three graves. Those who had not been killed right away were buried alive. [4] The ghetto was liquidated on August 18 the same year, with the remaining Jews taken to Jasło ghetto. [5] These were sent a few days later to the Belzec extermination camp.
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The Jewish Ghetto Police or Jewish Police Service, also called the Jewish Police by Jews, were auxiliary police units organized within the Nazi ghettos by local Judenrat.
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Radom Ghetto was a Nazi ghetto set up in March 1941 in the city of Radom during occupation of Poland, for the purpose of persecution and exploitation of Polish Jews. It was closed off from the outside officially in April 1941. A year and a half later, the liquidation of the ghetto began in August 1942, and ended in July 1944, with approximately 30,000–32,000 victims deported aboard Holocaust trains to their deaths at the Treblinka extermination camp.
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The Kraków Jewish Council was a 24-person Jewish managerial board formally established in the city of Kraków, Poland by German authorities in December 1939, and later in the Kraków Ghetto when the ghetto was officially formed on March 3, 1941. The Kraków Jewish Council formation was mandated by Nazi administration officials, who demanded that these councils be formed as supervisors of the inmates of their respective ghettos in the General Government, and in other occupied areas. The Jewish Council in Kraków was in direct contact and controlled by Nazi officials on most matters, but had some limited degree of autonomy. The Krakow Jewish council had 19 separate departments that oversaw labor, welfare, health and finance, among other items.
The Kraków Ghetto Jewish Police were a law enforcement service in the Kraków Ghetto. The Kraków Ghetto Jewish Police were a local force of the Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst, often abbreviated as OD. The OD were overseen by the Judenrat of each ghetto. The Kraków OD, unlike many other Jewish Police forces, served as willing enforcers of Nazi policies and the Gestapo. Among other duties, they oversaw the liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto and helped transport Jews to Bełżec extermination camp.
Brzesko Ghetto was a Nazi ghetto during World War II in occupied Poland. The ghetto was created by the Third Reich in 1941 in the Polish town of Brzesko located in the Kraków District about 40 miles from Kraków. The ghetto was open when it was first created. In 1942, walls were put up and the ghetto became a closed ghetto. An estimated 4,000 Jewish people lived there but another 2,000 moved there by 1942, many arriving from Kraków and the surrounding area. The Jewish people living within Brzesko were sent to the Bełżec extermination camp and Auschwitz extermination camp. After the exterminations, the camp was closed end of 1942.
Thousands of Jews lived in the towns of Dęblin and Irena in central Poland before World War II; Irena was the site of the Polish Air Force Academy from 1927. In September 1939, the town was captured during the German invasion of Poland and the persecution of Jews began with drafts into forced labor and the establishment of a Judenrat. A ghetto was established in Irena in November 1940. It initially consisted of six streets and was an open ghetto. Many ghetto inhabitants worked on labor projects for Dęblin Fortress, the railway, and the Luftwaffe. Beginning in May 1941, Jews were sent to labor camps around Dęblin from the Opole and Warsaw ghettos. Conditions in the ghetto worsened in late 1941 due to increased German restrictions on ghetto inhabitants and epidemics of typhus and dysentery.
Source: Główna Komisja Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce – Rada Ochrony Pomników Walki i Meczeństwa – "Obozy hitlerowskie na ziemiach polskich 1939–1945", Warsaw 1979, (translated from Polish).