The Holocaust

The ghetto or Jewish "district" was created in March 1941, restricted primarily to the streets of Pabianicka, Fabryczna, Krolewska, and Sienkiewicza. However, it was considered an "open" ghetto although some streets in town were closed to Jews. 

Conditions were crowded, especially since many homes had been destroyed by fire and more Jews from surrounding towns were brought in.  Obtaining water, medicine and medical care was extremely difficult. Jews worked in the town and often sold their belongings for food.  Illegal trade grew despite the severe punishment of jail, or even death, if caught. Many Jews also sewed clothing for the Nazi Army at a factory taken over by the  Germans. Until the middle of 1941, some semblance of a limited social life existed even in this awful environment.  The Bund (the Jewish social democratic worker's party), communist groups, Agudat Israel (a political religious party),  and schools continued to meet underground.  Once the forced labor started, schools closed and all this activity stopped.  Jews were sent to surrounding towns to clean streets with most of the pay going to the town of Belchatow and some of it going to the Judenrat (Jewish Councils established by the Nazis to govern Jewish affairs in occupied Europe). By March 1942, 5,460 - 6, 000 people lived in the ghetto.   Click here to read a translation of "Under the Nazi Occupation" -- a chapter by Leib Podlowski in the Belchatow Yizkor Book on the Yizkor Book Project site hosted by JewishGen.

Jew cleaning Ewangelicka St. (1941) (Note the Nazi flag hanging from the window.) (photograph provided by Boguslaw Dziedzic)

Jews arriving in the Belchatow Ghetto on Kosciuszko Street (1941) (photograph from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives -- public domain) Jewish forced laborers from Belchatow walk along unpaved road (1941). (photograph from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives -- public domain)

Click here to visit the website dedicated to the Jewish Survivors of Belchatow, containing photographs provided by the families of people in them.

The Synagogue in ruins (1944) (photograph provided by Boguslaw Dziedzic)

In Belchatow, the ruined synagogue became a gym, but it was eventually closed and finally torn down in 1956 and replaced by an apartment building for new officials, clerks, teachers, etc. (since Belchatow became a "powiat" town in 1956). The Talmud Torah (Yeshiva) became an office building -- the main office of the weavers co-operative Czyn Majowy. The cemetery was destroyed, and the stones were used for roads and sidewalks, to pave the riverbed of the Widawki River, to repair bridges, and in the foundations of new houses. Click here for a translation of "The Synagogue" -- a personal recollection of the tearing down of the synagogue in 1956 and a history of the synagogue and the revival of interest in Jewish Belchatow -- from a 1996 magazine article by Boguslaw Dziedzic.