On 3 August 1943, members of the Jewish Combat Organization in the Będzin Ghetto in Poland revolted against SS officers who were completing their last major deportation in the camp.
Prior to the Holocaust, Będzin had a vibrant Jewish community. According to the 1921 Polish census, the town's Jewish population was over 17,000 people, amounting to 62.1 percent of its total population, and by 1938, the number of Jews increased to about 22,500.
German forces entered the town on 4 September 1939 and several days later burned down the Great Synagogue in the Old City, 50 Jewish-owned houses surrounding the synagogue, and murdering 60 Jews in the process. Shortly thereafter, the Jewish underground resistance in Będzin became active as they began circulating illegal papers and contacted the Warsaw Ghetto underground.
Despite the difficulties in Będzin, thousands of Jews from central Poland sought refuge as the conditions in Będzin were considered better than in most other places in occupied Poland. As a result, the Jewish population in Będzin increased in 1941 to 25,171.
Large numbers of young Jews were sent to labor camps: By April 1942, 6,500 Jews from Będzin, Sosnowiec, and other nearby towns were forced to labor camps. Then in May and June 1942, an additional 2,400 "non-productive" Jews were deported to Auschwitz, followed by an even larger deportation of 8,000-10,000 Jews to Auschwitz on August 15.
The revolt was led by Frumka Plotnicka, a partisan and Socialist Zionist originally from the Warsaw Ghetto. Plotnicka referred to herself as a gravedigger due to seeing so many trains bound for the death camps and observing many ghetto liquidations. Emanuel Ringelblum, the founder of a clandestine organization that aimed to provide an accurate record of events in German-occupied Poland, described Plotnicka as “in mortal danger every day,” relying “entirely on their ‘Aryan’ faces and on the peasant kerchiefs that cover their heads.”
Plotnicka used false identities to travel across Nazi-occupied Poland as a courier and delivered guns and instructions for building other weapons to Jewish fighting organizations. Supporting the revolt were about 1,400 Jews.
After three days of combat, Płotnicka and other insurgents ran out of ammunition and eventually lost their lives after SS units from Auschwitz were successfully dispatched to assist in suppressing the revolt.
The ghetto was fully liquidated shortly thereafter, as many of the deportees were taken to Auschwitz where most were gassed or starved. In all, about 30,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz from Będzin with only about 2,000 surviving.
Frumka Plotnicka was posthumously awarded the Order of the Cross of Grunwald in 1948.
