Ghetto Heroes Square

On January 4, 1943, the German police ordered a strict check of the small ghetto. In the Warsaw Square, policemen selected several hundred individuals, who were then imprisoned in a German guardhouse. As the captives were being led to the transport, two members of the Jewish Fighting Organization, armed only with a pistol and a kitchen knife, attacked the German officers, injuring them superficially. In retaliation, the German police killed the fighters and, as a consequence, another 24 men. The tragic toll of the events included not only the 26 men who were killed, but also hundreds of adults and children who were deported to Radomsko, and later sent to the extermination camp in Treblinka. The people of Częstochowa, however, took pride in being the first to put up armed resistance against the Germans, two weeks earlier than it happened in Warsaw (January 19).