Sosnowiec Ghetto

The Sosnowiec Ghetto
Liquidation of the Sosnowiec Ghetto. Deportation action at the Sosnowiec Central station, 1943
Sosnowiec Sosnowiec location north of Auschwitz during the Holocaust in Poland
Sosnowiec Ghetto Location of Sosnowiec in Poland today
Location	Sosnowiec, 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, transit to extermination camps
Organizations	Schutzstaffel (SS)
Camp	Auschwitz
Victims	35,000 Polish Jews

The Sosnowiec Ghetto (German: Ghetto von Sosnowitz) was a World War II ghetto set up by Nazi German authorities for Polish Jews in the Środula district of Sosnowiec in the Province of Upper Silesia. During the Holocaust in occupied Poland, most inmates, estimated at over 35,000 Jewish men, women and children were deported to Auschwitz death camp aboard Holocaust trains following roundups lasting from June until August 1943. The Ghetto was liquidated during an uprising, a final act of defiance of its Underground Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) made up of youth. Most of the Jewish fighters perished.

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

Before the war, there were about 30,000 Jews in Sosnowiec, making up about 20% of the town's population. Over the next two years the Germans resettled thousands of Jews from smaller towns to Sosnowiec, temporarily increasing the size of the local Jewish community to 45,000. By late 1942, Będzin and nearby Sosnowiec (which bordered Będzin), became the only two cities in the Zagłębie Dąbrowskie region that were still inhabited by Jews.

The city, located on the pre-war Polish-German border, was taken over by the Germans on the first day of the invasion of Poland. Arrests and beatings among more prominent Jews began the next morning. On 9 September 1939 the Great Synagogue in Sosnowiec was burned. Local Jews were being evicted from better homes and terrorized on the streets. Jewish businesses were plundered by individual soldiers and closed by the Nazis pending confiscation proceedings. Shootings and first mass executions followed soon afterwards. Forced relocations into crowded tenements slowly created a ghetto.