Ożarów Ghetto

Members of the Boys were imprisoned in the Ożarów Ghetto.

The Ożarów Ghetto was one of a network of ghettos set up by Nazi Germany in which Jews were forced to live in occupied Poland. As with other ghettos in Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, the Ożarów ghetto was established to contain the region’s Jews and isolate them from the rest of the population until the Nazi leadership could decide on an answer to the so-called “Jewish Question.”

The Boys and their families spent years living in dire conditions. The ghettos were not designed for the vast numbers of people forced to find space to live within them. As a result, multiple families shared cramped and insanitary accommodation.

The Boys were teenage and child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after the war for rest and rehabilitation.

^{Ożarów Jewish Cemetery}

Ożarów is a town in Poland, in the province of Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship. To find out more about the region and the Boys who came from there click here.

The ghetto was set up on 1 January 1942. Jews were brought to the ghetto from Łódź, Kielce, Kraków and Vienna. The influx of deportees led to significant overcrowding.

Layout

The ghetto was not fenced. Signs were placed warning that any Jew who strayed more than a kilometre from the ghetto would be shot. Poles were allowed to move freely within its area. Some ghetto inhabitants worked in labour gangs.

Deportation & Liquidation

On 3 September 1942, the Germans herded the Jews into the market square. About 700 people were selected for slave labour at the HASAG labour camp in Skarżysko-Kamienna.

The ghetto was liquidated in late October 1942. The remaining 4,500 Jews, mostly elderly, women, and children were loaded onto carts or marched on foot to the railway station in Jasice. During the march, those who could not keep up were shot. From the station, they were transported to the Treblinka extermination camp. A significant number of Jews managed to escape and hide in nearby forests or with peasants.

Aftermath

A group of 25 men were left in Ożarów, whose task was to clean up the ghetto area and sort the property stolen from the victims. After completing the work, a Ukrainian policeman shot them near the road leading to Sandomierz, and their bodies were thrown into a well.

Memorialisation

There is a memorial in the Jewish cemetery. To find out more about visiting Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship click here.