The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the German authorities within the new General Government territory of occupied Poland. At its height, as many as 460,000 Jews were imprisoned there, in an area of 3.4 km2 (1.3 sq mi), with an average of 9.2 persons per room, barely subsisting on meager food rations. From the Warsaw Ghetto, Jews were deported to Nazi concentration camps and mass-killing centers. In the summer of 1942, at least 254,000 ghetto residents were sent to the Treblinka extermination camp during Großaktion Warschau under the guise of "resettlement in the East" over the course of the summer. The ghetto was demolished by the Germans in May 1943 after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had temporarily halted the deportations. The total death toll among the prisoners of the ghetto is estimated to be at least 300,000 killed by bullet or gas, combined with 92,000 victims of starvation and related diseases, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the casualties of the final destruction of the ghetto.
Olkusz is a town in southern Poland with 36,607 inhabitants (2014). Situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship, previously in Katowice Voivodeship (1975–1998), it is the capital of Olkusz County. Olkusz is known for its abundance of silver, which is mined and extracted in the vicinity.
Szymon Datner was a Polish historian, Holocaust survivor and underground operative from Białystok, best known for his studies of the Nazi war crimes and events of The Holocaust in the Białystok region. His 1946 Walka i zagłada białostockiego ghetta was one of the first studies of the Białystok Ghetto.
The Lwów Ghetto was a Nazi ghetto in the city of Lwów in the territory of Nazi-administered General Government in German-occupied Poland.
The Blue Police, was the police during the Second World War in the General Government, semicolonial entity on a territory of German-occupied Poland. Its official German name was Polnische Polizei im Generalgouvernement.
Szmalcownik ; in English, also sometimes spelled shmaltsovnik) is a pejorative Polish slang expression that originated during the Holocaust in Poland in World War II and refers to a person who blackmailed Jews who were in hiding, or who blackmailed Poles who aided Jews, during the German occupation. By stripping Jews of their financial resources, blackmailers added substantially to the danger that Jews and their rescuers faced and increased their chances of being caught and killed.
Janowska concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp combining elements of labor, transit, and extermination camps. It was established in September 1941 on the outskirts of Lwów in what had become, after the German invasion, the General Government. The camp was named after the nearby street Janowska in Lwów of the interwar Second Polish Republic.
The Grossaktion Warsaw was the Nazi code name for the deportation and mass murder of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto during the summer of 1942, beginning on 22 July. During the Grossaktion, Jews were terrorized in daily round-ups, marched through the ghetto, and assembled at the Umschlagplatz station square for what was called in the Nazi euphemistic jargon "resettlement to the East". From there, they were sent aboard overcrowded Holocaust trains to the extermination camp in Treblinka.
The Sosnowiec Ghetto was a World War II ghetto set up by Nazi German authorities for Polish Jews in the Środula district of Sosnowiec in the Province of Upper Silesia. During the Holocaust in occupied Poland, most inmates, estimated at over 35,000 Jewish men, women and children were deported to Auschwitz death camp aboard Holocaust trains following roundups lasting from June until August 1943. The ghetto was liquidated during an uprising, a final act of defiance of its Underground Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) made up of youth. Most of the Jewish fighters perished.
Ostindustrie GmbH was one of many industrial projects set up by the Nazi German Schutzstaffel (SS) using Jewish and Polish forced labor during World War II. Founded in March 1943 in German-occupied Poland, Osti operated confiscated Jewish and Polish prewar industrial enterprises, including foundries, textile plants, quarries and glassworks. Osti was headed by SS-Obersturmführer Max Horn, who was subordinated directly to Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. At its height, some 16,000 Jews and 1,000 Poles worked for the company, interned in a network of labor and concentration camps in the Lublin District of the semi-colonial General Government territory.
Mira Fuchrer was a Polish Jewish activist of the Jewish resistance movement in the Warsaw Ghetto during the occupation of Poland in World War II; member of the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB), and resistance fighter during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. Surrounded by the Germans and their auxiliaries in the ghetto bunker, she refused to surrender and committed suicide with the other members of the Jewish resistance.
Julian Chorążycki served as doctor-in-chief of the infantry regiment in the Polish Army during the reconstitution of sovereign Poland. In the interwar period, he was a throat surgeon practising in Warsaw. Born Jewish, Chorążycki spent two years in the Warsaw Ghetto. During the Holocaust in Poland he became the first leader of the perilous prisoner uprising at the Treblinka extermination camp. On August 2, 1943 – after the long period of preparation posing an immediate threat to life – an armed revolt in Treblinka erupted, however, Chorążycki killed himself on April 19, 1943, when faced with imminent capture, to avoid revealing details of the uprising and its participants under torture.
The Opatów Ghetto was a World War II ghetto set up by Nazi Germany for the purpose of persecution and exploitation of local Jews in the town of Opatów during the German occupation of Poland. The approximate number of Jews confined to the ghetto was about ten thousand, including a group of expelees from the Czech Republic and Austria. Beginning in January 1942 the SS conducted mass shooting actions at the Jewish cemetery in Opatów where the bodies of the ghetto victims were also buried by the hundreds.
Jan Zbigniew Grabowski is a Polish-Canadian professor of history at the University of Ottawa, specializing in Jewish–Polish relations in German-occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust in Poland.
Jacek Leociak is a Polish literary scholar and historian as well as author. He is a professor of humanities and an employee of the Institute of Literary Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Center for Holocaust Research in Warsaw.
The Holocaust in East Upper Silesia resulted in the murder of most of the Jews living in East Upper Silesia during World War II. It is best known as the site of Auschwitz concentration camp, but it also hosted many of the forced-labor camps of Organization Schmelt and seventeen ghettos, including Sosnowiec Ghetto, Będzin Ghetto, and Dąbrowa Górnicza Ghetto. Part of the region had been in Poland before World War II and other parts in Germany.
CENTOS was a Polish-Jewish children's-aid society. Founded in 1924, it became a "leading organization for Jewish childcare" in the Second Polish Republic and was highly active in the Warsaw Ghetto during The Holocaust in Poland.
The Bloody Wednesday of Olkusz or Bloody Wednesday in Olkusz was perpetrated by the German occupiers in Olkusz on July 31, 1940, during World War II, in which a number of Polish civilians were murdered.
