Skarszysko-Kamienna, Poland
Skarzysko-Kamienna is a town in south-central Poland by the Kamienna River, that sits between Radom and Kielc.
n 1928, town's name was changed to Skarżysko-Kamienna. In 1937 the town had 19,700 inhabitants, among them 2,800 Jews (about 14% of the total).
Following the September 1939 invasion of Poland by Germany, which started World War II, Skarżysko-Kamienna was under German occupation until liberated by the Soviet army in January 1945. The Germans controlled the ammunition factory to support their own war effort, and from 1940 it was controlled by the company Hugo Schneider Aktiengesellschaft (HASAG), which ran it as a subcontractor for the Wehrmacht. In 1940, the Germans carried out mass executions of Poles (360 people executed in February and 760 in June).[3] The Polish underground resistance organization Orzeł Biały ("White Eagle") was organized in the town. Among its members were local monks, and a weapons depot used by Polish partisans was located in the local monastery. Several monks were arrested and murdered by the Germans in the massacre committed in February 1940, while one managed to escape arrest.
The ghetto for the town's Jewish population was established by the Germans in April or May 1941. Between August 1942 and summer of 1943 Jews from the Radom district were brought to three camps near the munitions factory to work the factory. According to German records, of the total 17,210 brought in with 58 transports, 6,408 managed to survive long enough to be evacuated to other camps when the Germans closed the factory in 1944. The ghetto was liquidated in October 1942, with some inhabitants judged fit for work moved to the factory labour camps (about 500 out of 3000), and the rest were transported to Treblinka. In the major monograph on the subject estimated that despite the incompleteness of German records which likely underestimate the number of inmates, about 25,000 Jewish inmates were brought to the camp and 7,000 were evacuated from it; about 18,000 died there. The secret Polish Council to Aid Jews "Żegota", established by the Polish resistance movement, operated in the town. There are several known cases of Poles, who were either executed on sight or imprisoned in the local prison and deported to concentration camps for rescuing and aiding Jews.
At least nine boy scouts and two girls scouts from the town were murdered by the Germans during the occupation (see Nazi crimes against the Polish nation). The monk who managed to avoid capture by the Germans in 1940, died in the Soviet bombing of the town in 1945.
forced labor camp for Jews, located in the Polish town of Skarzysko-Kamienna. The camp belonged to the German Hasag concern. It was established in August 1942 and was liquidated on August 1, 1944. Altogether, 25,000--30,000 Jews were brought to SkarzyskoKamienna, and between 18,000--23,000 perished there.
On January 18, 1945 the town was liberated and restored to Poland, although with a Soviet-installed communist regime, which remained in power until the Fall of Communism in the 1980s. About a dozen Jewish survivors returned to Skarżysko-Kamienna in the winter of 1945-1946 to retrieve Jewish property. Soon afterwards, in February 1946, five of them were murdered for profit by a small group of local criminals. The murderers, among them the head of the Soviet-installed town police and another communist policeman, were put to trial in Łodź. Three of them received the death penalty. The remaining Jews left Poland, except for Dr. Zundel Kahanel and his wife Bima who spent the rest of their lives in the city.
Train Station 2011
Meanwhile, in 1948 the leading HASAG managers were tried in Leipzig, then in the part of Germany occupied by the Soviet Union. Of the 25 tried, 4 were sentenced to death, 2 to life in prison, and 18 to terms between one and five years.
Today
Skarżysko-Kamienna is an important railroad junction, with two main lines (Kraków - Warsaw and Sandomierz - Koluszki) crossing there.
Before World War II, 2,200 Jews lived in Skarzysko–Kamienna. The German army entered on Sept. 7, 1939, and immediately initiated anti-Jewish terror. On May 5, 1941, the ghetto was established. In October 1942 an Aktion took place in which the town's entire Jewish population was deported to the *Treblinka death camp and exterminated. After the liquidation of the ghetto a massive Julag (Judenlager), a slave labor camp, was set up in the town. In January 1944 the camp officially became a concentration camp. It existed until August 1944, when all its inmates were deported to other concentration camps, mainly *Buchenwald in Germany and the *Czestochowa- "HASAG" camp in western Poland. Altogether, about 15,000 Jewish prisoners passed through this camp, but over 10,000 of them perished there. Many prisoners died of hunger and disease due to the subhuman conditions prevailing in the camp. Others were murdered by the SS men on the camp's staff. A resistance organization active in the camp smuggled out a small number of prisoners for guerrilla activities, but preparations for a general armed revolt failed. After the war the Jewish community in Skarzysko-Kamienna was not reconstituted.
