Prior to the
invasion of Poland, Jews constituted around 50 percent of the town's population of 30,000 inhabitants. During the
invasion of Poland, the German
Panzer Division Kempf rolled into Siedlce on 12 September 1939 after a fierce battle along the
Bug River with the Polish
Modlin Army which surrendered soon afterwards. On
Christmas Eve the Nazis set fire to the synagogue and burned it to the ground, notably with Jewish refugees inside. Over a thousand Jews expelled from
Kalisz were deported to Siedlce in 1940, In order to strike terror in overcrowded neighbourhoods, the
German police organized a 3-day shooting action in March 1941. The formal creation of
a ghetto in Siedlce was pronounced on 2 August 1941. The smaller number of non-Jewish Poles living in designated areas were ordered to move out before 8:00 p.m. on 6 August. The Jewish families (over half of the city's population) were given two weeks to relocate there, along with
Roma people. The ghetto zone consisted of several small city blocks and over a dozen walkable streets in city centre north of the Old Square. The ghetto was closed off by a barbed wire fence, and cut off from the outside world on 1 October 1941 with only three gates leading out, guarded by Nazi patrols. The
Treblinka extermination camp – built north of Siedlce exclusively for the implementation of
Operation Reinhard – began gassing Jews in July 1942. The next month, on 22 August 1942 the Siedlce Ghetto liquidation action began in earnest, under
SS-Obersturmführer Schultz. during the liquidation of the ghetto in
Siedlce, beginning 23 August 1942
Ghetto liquidation Around 10,000 Jews were herded into the square on 22 August, including all captives brought on foot by Orpo from the transit ghettos in three nearby settlements; On the day of the "aktion", the Jewish hospital was liquidated, with everyone killed on site either in their beds or out in the courtyard. and who took part in the unloading of the freight cars. He described it in the following way in his book
Revolt in Treblinka: "Even as we emptied twenty cattle cars, another twenty pulled up at the platform. These, too, were full of bodies. Again there were the brutal beatings of the Ukrainians and the SS men, and the hell began anew. We were bruised from head to toe. Again we emptied the cars of corpses, only corpses. In several hours, we hauled 6,000–7,000 of them to the Lazarett. We learned that the transport had come from Siedlce, a town about 60 kilometers from Treblinka." The last two box cars were filled with the victims' clothing containing nothing of any value. The Siedlce Jewish community was not restored after Nazi defeat, and the town's later history lacked the hitherto conspicuous Jewish component. Survivors of the town's population established an association in
Israel which in 1956 published a comprehensive memorial book on the community's history. One of the survivors, Yisrael Kravitz, published his memoires in 1971 as the
Five Years of Living Hell under Nazi Rule in the City of Siedlce. ==Escape and rescue attempts==