Memorial to the murdered Jews of Częstochowa

Miejsca upamiętniające ofiary Holocaustu w Częstochowie

In Częstochowa a few memorials remember the once important Jewish community and the city's approximately 40,000 murdered Jews.

History

Since the middle ages the city of Częstochowa, located on the banks of the river Warta in the south of Poland, is one of the most important pilgrimage sites for Catholic Poles. Jews lived here probably since the beginning of the 18th century. In the course of the First Partition of Poland the city initially became part of Prussia in 1793 but passed to the Russian Empire in 1815. In the 19th century the Jews of Częstochowa were considered to be mainly liberal and assimilated.
At the time of the German attack on Poland there were approximately 28,500 Jews living in Częstochowa, making up one fifth of the entire population. Since the city was located close to the border it fell into the hands of the Wehrmacht as early as December 3, 1939. The next day, which went down in history as »Bloody Monday«, the Wehrmacht staged a bloodbath, killing more than 1,000 inhabitants of Częstochowa, among them about 150 Jews. The massacre was said to have been triggered by shots fired from houses occupied by Jews.
The city was incorporated into the German Reich, the condition for the the Jews deteriorated steadily and drastically. The most important synagogues were destroyed and a Jewish Council and a Jewish police force were created to enforce German orders. In 1941 the occupiers established a ghetto for the 40,000 Jews of the city and its environs. The living conditions were catastrophic, hundreds died of diseases.
Between September 22 and October 8, 1942 the ghetto was liquidated. The vast majority of the ghetto's residents, approximately 38,500 Jews were deported to the extermination camp of Treblinka near Warsaw, where the SS murdered almost all of them on their arrival with carbon monoxide. 2,000 Jews were shot on site during the »Aktion«. Only some thousand Jews who were fit for work remained in Częstochowa, they were gradually deported or murdered.

Częstochowa, 1939, Photo from September 4, 1939, the »Bloody Monday«, USHMM

Częstochowa, 1893, the New Synagogue which was destroyed in 1939, public domain

Victims

Most of the Jews from Częstochowa were murdered during the German occupation. The SS murdered as many as 38,500 residents of the Częstochowa ghetto by poison gas in the extermination camp of Treblinka. Several thousand Jews were shot on site during various »Aktionen«, 150 already at »Bloody Monday« in September 1939 and about 2,000, mainly children and elderly people, during the ghetto's liquidation in autumn 1942. When the Jews put up armed resistance during the liquidation of the small ghetto in June 1943, approximately 500 of them burned alive as the uprising was suppressed. How many of the Jews who were deported over the years from Częstochowa to other ghettos and labour camps died is not known.

The Second World War began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland and the occupation of the west of the country by German troops and the east of the country by the Red Army. Persecution and terror directly followed the invasion in both parts of the country. German units massacred members of the intelligentsia, Jewish and non-Jewish civilians as well as hospital patients. At the end of 1939 the German administration established ghettos where the Jewish population was forced to live in cramped and horrendous conditions. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, eastern Poland also fell under German control. SS Einsatzgruppen started to systematically murder Jewish men, later also women and children. In autumn 1941, local German authorities in the former west of the country began to prepare for the mass murder of Jewish ghetto prisoners using poison gas. By 1945, some three million Polish Jews had been murdered in the extermination camps at Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek or Auschwitz, starved to death in the ghettos or shot dead. In 1943 the Jews living in the Warsaw ghetto staged an uprising, which was brutally crushed by the SS. Polish soldiers fought with the Allies on all fronts during the Second World War. Polish partisan groups, including the patriotic »Armia Krajowa« (Home Army), formed the largest resistance movement in occupied Europe. August 1, 1944 saw the start of the Warsaw Uprising, the most extensive civilian campaign against the Germans in occupied Europe. It failed also because the Red Army, already standing on the opposite side of the Vistula River, chose not to intervene. It is estimated that up to 250,000 people lost their lives in the uprising. A total of around three million non-Jewish Poles met a violent death during the German occupation. Once the Red Army had arrived on (East) Polish soil in January 1944, the troops of the Armia Krajowa were stripped of their weapons by the Soviet secret service and the officers were either shot or deported. The millions of deaths during the occupation, the permanent Soviet annexation of eastern Poland, the incorporation of former eastern German territories and the ensuing population transfers all left a traumatic political and social legacy in Poland. Remembrance of the murder of European Jews in German extermination camps was initially marginalised in the Polish culture of memory. Although Auschwitz soon became an international symbol of the Holocaust, in Poland it was viewed for decades above all as a »site of Polish martyrdom«. However, the start of the 21st century brought about changes in this respect, due in part to the fierce debates over the Jedwabne massacre in eastern Poland. The massacre of around 340 Jews on July 10, 1941 was originally attributed to the »Gestapo and Hitler police« but had in fact been carried out by Polish »neighbours« without orders from the Germans. Debates in Poland and abroad on Polish perpetration resulted in the Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski (*1954) issuing an apology to the victims in 2001. There were increasing calls from experts, such as those from Poland’s Institute for National Remembrance, for the country to confront the most difficult chapters in its history, which also include the anti-Jewish pogroms in 1946-47 and state anti-semitism in communist Poland during the post-war period. The Polish invests extensively in memorial culture, including grand projects with international ambition. The Warsaw Rising Museum was opened already in 2004. The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews was opened in 2013 on the territory of the former Warsaw Ghetto, a new museum dedicated specifically to the Warsaw Ghetto will follow suit in 2024. Since 2017, there is a major Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. Since the turn of the millennium, the sites of the former German extermination camps have also been converted into modern memorial sites. An ever-growing preoccupation with Poland’s Jewish and multicultural heritage can be observed in the field of culture as well.

Remembrance

At the end of war about 5,000 Jewish prisoners were liberated in Częstochowa, most of them had been deported to the city shortly before. By the middle of 1946 the number of Jews stabilized at 2,000 and many Jewish institutions resumed their work. However, after anti-Semitic riots and especially after the pogrom in the nearby town of Kielce in July 1946 most of the Jews decided to emigrate. During the times of the communist dictatorship all Jewish life in Częstochowa vanished. Since the great synagogues were destroyed during the German occupation, only the large Jewish cemetery bears witness to the former importance of the Jewish community of Częstochowa. On the cemetery, which was the scene of various murder operations during the occupation are several gravestones and memorials remembering the victims.
On the square in front of the city's cathedral a memorial stone was erected in 1989, remembering the victims of »Bloody Monday«, especially the 300 of them who were killed by soldiers of the Wehrmacht in the close proximity.
In 2009 a Holocaust memorial was dedicated at the edge of the site of the former ghetto. It consists of a torn clinker wall on which a large Star of David is mounted. The memorial was designed by the Częstochowa-born artist Samuel Willenberg (*1923), one of the last survivors of the 1943 uprising in the extermination camp of Treblinka.

Częstochowa, 2011, Holocaust memorial in the former ghetto, Takimirimo

Częstochowa, 2013, Grave of Jews murdered in January 1942 on the Jewish cemetery, Takimirimo

Open

The memorials are accessible at all times.

Contact

ul. Strażacka (Pomnik ofiar getta)
42-200 Częstochowa

Częstochowa, 2013, On the Jewish cemetery, Takimirimo

Częstochowa, 2005, Memorial to the victims of »Bloody Monday« in front of the cathedral, Wikipedia Commons, Reytan

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