Editing Kielce (section)

===Jewish history===
[[File:Kielce synagoga front.jpg|thumb|[[Kielce Synagogue]], built 1903-1909]]
Prior to the 1939 [[Invasion of Poland]], like many other cities across the [[Second Polish Republic]], Kielce had a significant Jewish population. According to the [[Russian census of 1897]], among the total population of 23,200 inhabitants, there were 6,400 Jews in Kielce (around 27 percent).<ref>[[Joshua D. Zimmerman]], ''Poles, Jews, and the politics of nationality'', Univ of Wisconsin Press, 2004, {{ISBN|0-299-19464-7}}, [https://books.google.com/books?id=6sbr9cZyw_4C&dq=population+Brest+Poles+Jews&pg=PA16 Google Print, p.16]</ref> On the eve of the Second World War there were about 18,000 Jews in the city. Between the onset of war and March 1940, the Jewish population of Kielce expanded to 25,400 (35% of all residents),<ref name="shtetl-1">{{cite web |author=Marta Kubiszyn |author2=Adam Dylewski |author3=Justyna Filochowska |date=2009–2016 |title=Kielce |publisher=[[POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews]] |work=[[Virtual Shtetl]] |url=http://www.sztetl.org.pl/pl/article/kielce/5,historia/?action=view&page=1 |pages=1–3|language=pl}}</ref> with trains of dispossessed Jews arriving under the escort of German [[Order Police battalions]] from the [[Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany]].<ref name="yivo">{{cite web |author=Wacław Wierzbieniec |translator=Anna Grojec |title=Kielce |url=http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Kielce |publisher=YIVO Institute for Jewish Research |year=2010 |work=Jews in Eastern Europe}}</ref>

Immediately after the German [[occupation of Poland]] in September 1939, all Jews were ordered to wear a [[Star of David]] on their outer garments. Jewish–owned factories in Kielce were confiscated by the [[Gestapo]], stores and shops along the main thoroughfares liquidated, and ransom fines introduced. The [[Forced labour under German rule during World War II|forced labour]] and deportations to concentration camps culminated in mass extermination of Jews of Kielce during [[the Holocaust in occupied Poland]].<ref name="KUr">{{cite book |title=Zagada ludnosci zydowskiej Kielc: 1939–1945 |author=Prof. Krzysztof Urbański |year=2005 |chapter=III: Ghetto |chapter-url=http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/kielce1/kie076.html |pages=76–116 |via=JewishGen, Yizkor Book Project |translator=Yaacov Kotlicki}}</ref>

In April 1941, the [[Kielce Ghetto]] was formed, surrounded by high fences, barbed wire, and guards.<ref>{{cite book |title=Der Judenmord in Polen und die deutsche Ordnungspolizei 1939–1945 |author=Wolfgang Curilla |publisher=Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh |year=2011 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xfrrAwAAQBAJ&q=%22Polizeibataillon%20305%22%20Kielce |page=526 |isbn=978-3506770431}}</ref> The gentile Poles were ordered to vacate the area and the Jews were given one week to relocate. The ghetto was split in two, along Warszawska Street (Nowowarszawska) with the Silnica River&nbsp;''[[:pl:Silnica (rzeka)|(pl)]]'' running through it.<ref name="shtetl-1"/> The so-called large ghetto was set up between the streets of Orla, Piotrkowska, Pocieszka, and Warszawska to the east, and the smaller ghetto between Warszawska on the west, and the streets of Bodzentyńska, St. Wojciech, and the St. Wojciech square. The ghetto gates were closed on 5 April 1941; the [[Jewish Ghetto Police]] was formed with 85 members and ordered to guard it.<ref name="ChW">{{cite web |author=Chris Webb |title=Kielce |publisher=Holocaust Historical Society |year=2014 |url=http://www.holocausthistoricalsociety.org.uk/kielce.html |at=''Sources: The Yad Vashem Encylopiedia of the Ghettos During the Holocaust'' Volume 1, [[Yad Vashem]], 2009; ''Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka – The Aktion Reinhard Death Camps'' By [[Yitzhak Arad|Y. Arad]], Indiana University Press,&nbsp;1987}}</ref> Meanwhile, expulsions elsewhere and deportations to Kielce continued until August 1942 at which time there were 27,000 prisoners crammed in the ghetto. Trains with Jewish families arrived from the entire [[Kielce Voivodeship]], and also from [[Vienna]], [[Poznań]], and [[Łódź]].<ref name="shtetl-1"/>

The severe overcrowding, rampant hunger, and outbreaks of epidemic typhus took the lives of 4,000 people before mid-1942.<ref name="shtetl-1"/> During this time, many of them were forced to work at a nearby German munition plant run by [[Hasag]]. In August 1942, the [[Kielce Ghetto]] was liquidated in the course of only five days. During [[Roundup (history)|roundups]], all Jews unable to move were shot on the spot including the sick, the elderly, and the disabled; 20,000–21,000 Jews were led into waiting [[Holocaust train]]s, and murdered in the gas chambers of [[Treblinka extermination camp|Treblinka]]. After the extermination action only 2,000 Jews were left in Kielce, lodged in [[Zwangsarbeitslager|the labour camp]] at Stolarska and Jasna Streets ''[[:pl:Obóz pracy Jasna-Stolarska w Kielcach|(pl)]]'' within the small ghetto. Those who survived were sent to other forced labour camps. On 23 May 1943 the [[Kielce cemetery massacre]] was perpetrated by the German police; 45 Jewish children who had survived the [[Kielce Ghetto]] liquidation, were murdered by [[Order Police battalions]].<ref name="shtetl-1"/>

[[File:Kielce planty 7.jpg|thumb|Building of the Kielce Jewish Committee and refugee centre on Planty Street]]
On 4 July 1946 the local Jewish gathering of some 200 Holocaust survivors from the Planty 7 Street refugee centre of the Zionist Union became the target of the [[Kielce pogrom]] in which 37 (40) Jews (17–21 of whom remain unidentified) and 2 ethnic Poles were killed, including 11 fatally shot with military rifles and 11 more stabbed with bayonets, indicating direct involvement of loyal to Moscow Polish communist troops.<ref name="ipn2008">{{cite journal |title=Pogrom kielecki – oczami świadka |type=special issue |journal=Niezalezna Gazeta Polska |location=Warsaw |date=4 July 2008 |quote=Leszek Bukowski & Andrzej Jankowski (ed.), vol. II, with Foreword by Jan Żaryn, IPN: Warsaw 2008, pp. 166–171; {{ISBN|8360464871}}. |author=Judge Andrzej Jankowski |author2=Leszek Bukowski |at=1–8 in PDF |url=http://pamiec.pl/download/49/27596/IPN2920080704.pdf |access-date=3 August 2016 |archive-date=26 August 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160826073423/http://pamiec.pl/download/49/27596/IPN2920080704.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>

During the [[Cold War]], many Jewish historians theorized that the pogrom became the cause of outward Jewish emigration from Poland immediately following the opening of the borders in 1947.<ref>Königseder, Angelika, and [[Juliane Wetzel]], ''Waiting for Hope: Jewish Displaced Persons in Post-World War II Germany'', Northwestern University Press, 2001, {{ISBN|0-8101-1477-1}} [https://books.google.com/books?id=Y59izLT_VawC&dq=kielce+%22displaced+persons%22&pg=PA46 pp. 46-47]</ref><ref>Wyman, Mark, ''DPs: Europe's Displaced Persons'', Cornell University Press, 1998, {{ISBN|0-8014-8542-8}} [https://books.google.com/books?id=lHNw7MnsmlYC&dq=kielce+%22displaced+persons%22&pg=PA144 p. 144]</ref> Nevertheless, the true reasons behind the dramatic increase of Jewish emigration from Poland were far more complex.<ref name="Marrus">{{cite book|last=Marrus|first=Michael Robert | author-link = Michael Marrus|author2=Aristide R. Zolberg |title=The Unwanted: European Refugees from the First World War Through the Cold War|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ssrLM0yWD1kC&q=%22accelerated+powerfully+after+the+Kielce+pogrom%22&pg=PA336|publisher=Temple University Press|year=2002|pages=336|isbn=1-56639-955-6|quote="This gigantic effort, known by the Hebrew code word ''Brichah''(flight), accelerated powerfully after the Kielce pogrom in July 1946"}}</ref> The new government of the [[Communist Poland]] signed a repatriation agreement with the Soviet Union helping over 150,000 Holocaust survivors leave the Soviet Union legally.<ref name="Ther-Siljak">{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oGmTs2SceAgC&q=%22agreements+on+the%22+%22mutual+evacuation+of+citizens%22&pg=PA137 | title=Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe, 1944-1948 | publisher=Rowman & Littlefield | year=2001 | access-date=May 11, 2011 |author1=Philipp Ther |author-link=:de:Philipp Ther | author2-link=Ana Siljak |author2=Ana Siljak | pages=138 | isbn=0-7425-1094-8}}</ref> Poland was the only [[Eastern Bloc]] country to allow free and unrestricted Jewish [[Aliyah]] to the nascent [[State of Israel]], upon the conclusion of World War II.<ref name=D-H>Devorah Hakohen, [https://books.google.com/books?id=hCw6v0TFhdMC&dq=%22Poland+opened+its+gates+to+Jewish+emigration.%22&pg=PA70 ''Immigrants in turmoil: mass immigration to Israel and its repercussions...''] Syracuse University Press, 2003 - 325 pages. Page 70. {{nowrap|{{ISBN|0-8156-2969-9}}}}</ref> After the Kielce pogrom [[Marian Spychalski|Gen. Spychalski]] of PWP signed a legislative decree allowing the remaining survivors to leave Poland without visas or exit permits.<ref name="Kochavi-175">{{cite web |last=Aleksiun |first=Natalia |title=Beriḥah |url=http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/printarticle.aspx?id=219 |publisher=[[YIVO]] |quote=Suggested reading: Arieh J. Kochavi, "Britain and the Jewish Exodus...," Polin 7 (1992): pp. 161–175}}</ref> Poland was the only [[Eastern Bloc]] country to do so, at war's end.<ref name="D-H" /> Britain demanded from Poland (among others) to halt the Jewish exodus, but their pressure was largely unsuccessful.<ref name="Kochavi-xi">{{cite book|last=Kochavi|first=Arieh J.|title=Post-Holocaust Politics: Britain, the United States & Jewish Refugees, 1945–1948| url=https://archive.org/details/postholocaustpol00koch|url-access=registration|quote=Britain exerted pressure on the governments of Poland.|publisher=The University of North Carolina Press|year=2001|pages=xi|isbn=0-8078-2620-0}}</ref>