| Piotrków Trybunalski Ghetto | |
|---|---|
 Ghetto announcement, 24 January 1940 atPiotrków Trybunalski | |
| Location | Piotrków Trybunalski,German-occupied Poland 51°24′34″N19°42′06″E / 51.409566°N 19.701608°E /51.409566; 19.701608 |
| Incident type | Imprisonment, forced labor, starvation |
| Organizations | SS |
| Camp | Treblinka,Majdanek |
| Victims | 28,000Polish Jews |
ThePiotrków Trybunalski Ghetto (Yiddish:פּיִעטריקאָװ) was created inPiotrków Trybunalski onOctober 8, 1939, shortly after the 1939 GermanInvasion of Poland in World War II.[1] It was the firstNazi ghetto in occupied Europe.[2] founded onOctober 8, 1939 The town was occupied by theWehrmacht onSeptember 5, 1939. Piotrków was made into acounty seat (Kreis) of the newly createdŁódź District (Regierungsbezirk Litzmannstadt) of the German territory ofReichsgau Wartheland.[3] The ghetto was put under the command of Hans Drexler, an appointed NaziOberbürgermeister who also created the ghetto.[4] In total, some 16,500[4] to up to 28,000[5] Jews went through the Piotrków Ghetto which was liquidated beginning 14 October 1942 in four days of deportations toTreblinka andMajdanek aboard overcrowdedHolocaust trains.[1]
The Piotrków Ghetto was the first wartime ghetto of its kind. Set up in one of Poland's oldest cities with a thriving Jewish community, it took until late January 1940 for the new inmates to move into it.[5] First, theJudenrat (Jewish Council) was established and ordered to issue an announcement about the relocation, but this had no effect. Consequently, the Germans themselves evicted the Jews from their homes, transferring them to the ghetto by force.[4] Eventually, up to 28,000 Jews were squeezed into a part of town where only 6,000 people previously lived.[5] The homes vacated by the Jews were assigned to Christians and members of the German minority who took over their businesses after the relocation.[citation needed] It wasan open type ghetto –- an early variant of Nazi ghettoization -– without the barbed wire fences introduced later throughout all of occupied Poland. Only warning signs with skulls were placed along the boundaries, and the main gate erected.[4] The ghetto was pronounced closed from the outside onOctober 28, 1939.[5]
The initial population of about 10,000 Jews were not required to use permits to move around town, but shootings byOrdnungspolizei became commonplace and a curfew in the ghetto was introduced.[4] The influx of refugees expelled from other places, includingWarsaw,Łódź,Bełchatów,Kalisz,Gniezno andPłock, caused the ghetto population to more than double by 1942.[5] Jews were not allowed to use main streets. Many were sent asslave labor to prewar factories taken over by the Germans, including Hortensja Glassworks(pl), the Kara industrial glass factory, and the Bugaj wood factory on the lake(pl). Captured Jews were sent to build new fortifications and ditches.[5] More Jewish refugees and displaced persons came from neighbouring villages as well.[4]
The ghetto liquidation action began on the night ofOctober 13, 1942, commanded bySS-Hauptsturmführer Willy Blum. About 1,000 Jews unable to move were shot in their homes for "insubordination". By the next morning, some 22,000 Jews were herded onto the square by thesynagogue in order to undergo a "selection". In the course of the next few days, Jews were marched in columns to the railway station and loaded onto the awaitingfreight trains without food or water, 150 to one car.[5]
Following the 1942 deportations toMajdanek andTreblinka death camps, some 3,500 Jewish factory workers still remained in the small ghetto.[1] However, mass executions became more frequent in 1943, even inside the depleted synagogue, in the Jewish cemetery, and at an execution site nearRaków. By 1944 only 1,000 Jews were still alive. Asthe Soviet front began to approach, they were loaded onto freight trains and sent toBuchenwald andRavensbrück, never to return.[1]
Central Polish town 16 miles south ofŁódź; the site of the first Ghetto in Nazi Europe.
