Częstochowa, Poland

The industrial city of Częstochowa in southwest Poland is famous for the Catholic icon the Black Madonna but, before the Holocaust, it was also home to a lively Jewish community.

Częstochowa played a role in many of the Boys lives as a large number passed through the HASAG labour camp and from there were deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. It illustrates the importance of slave labour in their survival but is also significant as it was through this period that many close friendships among the Boys were formed.

Pre-war

When World War II broke out, 28,500 Jews lived in Częstochowa. They played an active part in industry, banking, civic and commercial life. The city was also a centre for doll manufacturing and many of the toy companies belonged to Jewish families.

Częstochowa was also an important centre of Hasidism and Zionist movements.  A Jewish agricultural training farm and a trade school operated in Częstochowa during the interwar years. There was also a network of religious and secular Jewish schools, as in most large Jewish communities in Poland.

Wartime

The Germans entered Częstochowa on Sunday, 3 September 1939 and persecution of the city’s Jews began immediately.

A ghetto was established on 9 April 1941. Some 20,000 Jews, including a large number from Kraków, Łódź and Płock and the nearby villages were also imprisoned in the Częstochowa Ghetto.

The German company HASAG ran a series of labour camps in the city, in which many of the Boys worked as slave labourers prior to deportation to the Buchenwald and Ravensbruck concentration camps in Germany.

During World War II, HASAG became a Nazi arms-manufacturing conglomerate with dozens of factories across German occupied Europe using slave labour on a massive scale. HASAG employed women as well as men.

There was a little known underground resistance movement in the ghetto that maintained close contact with the Jewish Fighting Organisation in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Liberation

When the Red Army liberated Częstochowa, 5,000 Jews were still living in the area.

In June 1946, 2,167 Jews were living in Częstochowa. Training farms prepared Jewish youth for life in Palestine until 1948. After the establishment of the state of Israel, many Jews left Częstochowa and, after the Polish Communist Party’s antisemitic campaigns of the 1960s, nearly all the remaining Jews left the city.

Present-day

Today, the main synagogue is a concert hall. There is an exhibition about Częstochowa’s Jewish community in the museum. There is a memorial at the site of the HASAG labour camp.