The Kielce Ghetto (, ) was a Jewish World War II ghetto created in 1941 by the Schutzstaffel (SS) in the Polish city of Kielce in the south-western region of the Second Polish Republic, occupied by German forces from 4 September 1939. Before the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, Kielce was the capital of the Kielce Voivodeship. The Germans incorporated the city into Distrikt Radom of the semi-colonial General Government territory. The liquidation of the ghetto took place in August 1942, with over 21,000 victims (men, women and children) deported to their deaths at the Treblinka extermination camp, and several thousands more shot, face-to-face.
There was a considerable Jewish presence in Kielce. The Kehilla operated two synagogues, a beth midrash house of learning, a mikveh, the cemetery with ohalim, an orphanage, a retirement home, three elementary schools, two high schools, a Talmudic college and a large Tarbut library with 10,000 volumes. There were also numerous organizations and societies including two sports clubs. Nevertheless, the economic crisis of the 1930 prompted many younger Jews to emigrate before the war began, mostly to America.
Ghetto history
On 4 September 1939, the city was bombed by the Luftwaffe and occupied by the German army on the following day. Kielce was made into a county seat of the newly formed Distrikt Radom governed by Dr. Karl Lasch appointed from Berlin on 26 October 1939. A month later, SS-Oberführer Fritz Katzmann – a notorious Holocaust perpetrator – took over policing of his district. As in all Polish cities incorporated into the Nazi German General Government territory, the new administration ordered the creation of a Judenrat in Kielce. It was headed by physician and former city counsellor Moshe (Moses) Pelc, fluent in German. On 1 December 1939 all Jews were ordered to wear a Star of David on their outer garments. At the same time, Jewish–owned factories were confiscated by the Gestapo, stores and shops along the main thoroughfares liquidated, and all wealthy houses plundered by the Nazi officials. The Grand Synagogue was emptied and turned into a storehouse with a holding cell. In January 1940 houses of Jewish prayer were made illegal.
Between the onset of war in September 1939 and March 1940, the Jewish population of Kielce expanded from 18,000, to 25,400 (35% of all residents), with trains of dispossessed Jews arriving under the escort of Ordnungspolizei from the Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany. Pelc and the Judenrat secured housing for them to the best of ability; soup kitchens were set up. Due to a typhus epidemic which erupted in early 1940, a new clinic opened.
Pelc used his Polish contacts to help Jewish families survive. The general Polish population was not separated from them as of yet. Also, the Judenrat received material help from the Kraków branch of the Jewish self-help organizations JSS and JDC. However, Pelc found himself unable to deal with the German ransom demands, and in August 1940 proposed that the industrialist Herman Lewi (Hermann Levy) become his successor. Pelc was dismissed, and a year later murdered on suspicion of "collaborating" with the Poles. Levy resumed his duties and imposed a heavier tax burden on the community. In October 1940 , age 36, was appointed mayor (Stadthauptmann) of Kielce. Drechsel had already successfully ghettoised 12,000 Jews in the occupied city of Piotrków Trybunalski, distance.
On 31 March 1941, Reichsamtsleiter Lasch ordered the creation of the Kielce Ghetto surrounded by high fences, barbed wire, and guards. Drechsel brought in Police Battalion 305 to help out. The gentile Poles were ordered to vacate the area and the Jews were given one week to relocate. The ghetto was split in two, along Warszawska Street (Nowowarszawska) with the Silnica River (pl) running through it. The so-called large ghetto was set up between the streets of Orla, Piotrkowska, Pocieszka, and Warszawska to the east, and the smaller ghetto between Warszawska on the west, and the streets of Bodzentyńska, St. Wojciech, and the St. Wojciech square. The ghetto gates were closed on 5 April 1941; the Jewish Ghetto Police was formed with 85 members and ordered to guard it. Meanwhile, further expulsions elsewhere and deportations to Kielce continued until August 1942 at which time there were 27,000 prisoners crammed in the ghetto. Trains with Jewish families arrived from the entire Kielce Voivodeship, and also from Vienna, Poznań, and Łódź. The severe overcrowding, rampant hunger, and outbreaks of epidemic typhus took the lives of 4,000 people before mid-1942.