Modrzejów Ghetto

Members of the Boys were imprisoned in the Modrzejów Ghetto.

The Modrzejów 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 Modrzejów 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.

Modrzejów is located 10km east-southeast of Katowice and is a suburb of Sosnowiec. In May 1939, there were 1,670 Jews living in Modrzejów.

On September 4, 1939, forces of the Wehrmacht occupied Modrzejów. Persecution of the Jews began immediately.

In 1942, the Jewish population was crammed into the small confines of Środula, a suburb of Sosnowiec. The ghetto existed less than a year before it was ultimately liquidated in August 1943. It housed approximately 3,000 individuals at its peak

^{Grzmot Family were prisoners in the Modrzejów Ghetto.}

On May 19, 1943, the Jews who were led out of it set off under escort towards the Sosnowiec Południowy railway station, from where they were transported by train to Plaszów and Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. Some of its inhabitants were sent to forced labour camps.

Sosnowiec Ghetto Liquidation

Almost no trace of the ghetto has survived until today.