In March 1941, the Germans established a ghetto in Opatów, covering the following streets: Joselewicza, Zatylna, Wąska and Starowałowa. About 10,000 Jews were imprisoned in its ghetto. people, including displaced persons from the Czech Republic and Austria. It was an open ghetto, without walls, but Jews were forbidden to go outside its area on penalty of being shot on sight. The number of prisoners grew with successive transports of residents of nearby villages and towns, as well as more distant cities such as Warsaw, Konin and Łódź.
In July 1941, Germans began transporting people to labour camps. A youth group planned to resist - for this purpose, weapons were smuggled to the ghetto and stored in the synagogue. The Germans, however, found out about it, seized the arms, and then killed everyone they found in the synagogue.
In September 1942, there were approximately 7,000 Jews imprisoned in the ghetto. The liquidation began on 20 October 1942. The day earlier, the German authorities issued an order according to which all the Jews were to gather in the nearby fields. On 20 October, members of the SS, military police and Ukrainian auxiliary services surrounded the assembled Jews and ordered them to march to the railway station in Jasice, approx. 18 km away (near Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski). Over 6,000 people were forced to march, of whom nearly 300 - mostly sick and elderly, incapable of long walks - were murdered by Germans on the way. After the selection, some of the people able to work were driven to the labour camp in Skarżysko-Kamienna. All the others were transported in overcrowded waggons to the German Nazi extermination camp in Treblinka.
About 100 people remained in the ghetto, mainly members of the Judenrat and the Jewish ghetto police, who were ordered to clean up the area, collect and sort the belongings left by the deportees, and prepare them for shipment to the Reich. After the works were done, most of the Jews were killed by Germans in the cemetery. Only a few people, including the head of the Judenrat was transported to a labour camp in Sandomierz.
Bibliography
- Opatów, [IN:] Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, vol. II, Bloomington 2012, p. 265
- Urbański K., Zagłada Żydów w dystrykcie radomskim, Kraków 2004.
