Będzin Ghetto

The Będzin Ghetto
Będzin Ghetto in the Holocaust, Modrzejowska Street, 1942
Będzin location during the Holocaust in Poland
Będzin Ghetto Location of Będzin in Poland today
Location	Będzin, German-occupied Poland 50°11′N 19°05′E / 50.19°N 19.08°E / 50.19; 19.08Coordinates: 50°11′N 19°05′E / 50.19°N 19.08°E / 50.19; 19.08
Incident type	Imprisonment, forced labor, starvation
Organizations	Schutzstaffel (SS)
Camp	Auschwitz
Victims	30,000 Polish Jews

The Będzin Ghetto (a.k.a. the Bendzin Ghetto, Yiddish: בענדינער געטאָ‎, Bendiner geto; German: Ghetto von Bendsburg) was a World War II ghetto set up by Nazi Germany for the Polish Jews in the town of Będzin in occupied south-western Poland. The formation of the 'Jewish Quarter' was pronounced by the German authorities in July 1940. Over 20,000 local Jews from Będzin, along with additional 10,000 Jews expelled from neighbouring communities, were forced to subsist there until the end of the Ghetto history during the Holocaust. Most of the able-bodied poor were forced to work in German military factories before being transported aboard Holocaust trains to the nearby concentration camp at Auschwitz where they were exterminated. The last major deportation of the ghetto inmates by the German SS – men, women and children – between 1 and 3 August 1943 was marked by the ghetto uprising by members of the Jewish Combat Organization.

The Będzin Ghetto formed a single administrative unit with the Sosnowiec Ghetto in the bordering Środula district of Sosnowiec, because both cities are a part of the same metropolitan area in the Dąbrowa Basin. The Jews from both ghettos shared the "Farma" vegetable garden allocated to Zionist youth by the Judenrat.

Before the 1939 invasion of Poland at the onset of World War II, Będzin had a vibrant Jewish community. According to the Polish census of 1921, the town's Jewish population consisted of 17,298 people, or 62.1 percent of its total population. By 1938, the number of Jews had increased to about 22,500.