Będzin Ghetto

The Będzin Ghetto (a.k.a. the Bendzin Ghetto, Yiddish: בענדינער געטאָ, romanized: Bendiner geto; German: Ghetto von Bendsburg) was a Jewish ghetto established by Nazi Germany for Polish Jews in the town of Będzin in occupied southwestern Poland. The German authorities announced the formation of this ghetto in July 1940. Over 20,000 local Jews from Będzin, along with an additional 10,000 Jews expelled from neighbouring communities, were forced to subsist there until the end of the ghetto history during the Holocaust. Most of the able-bodied poor were forced to work in German military factories before being transported aboard Holocaust trains to the nearby Auschwitz concentration camp, where they were exterminated. The last major deportation of the ghetto inmates by the Nazi Schutzstaffel ("SS") – men, women and children – between 1 and 3 August 1943 was marked by a ghetto uprising by members of the Jewish Combat Organization.

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

Fridrich Kuczynski, a member of the Organization Schmelt,, was sentenced to death after the war for the deaths of 100,000 Jewish victims.