The Jewish community in Czestochowa dates back to 1765. By the start of World War Two, close to thirty thousand Jews lived there, participating in every economic activity of the wealthy industrialized city. When the Germans took political control shortly after the September 1, 1939 invasion of Poland, the persecution of Jews began immediately, following the same pattern practiced throughout Poland: denial of civil rights, confiscation of property, harrassment, confinement to ghettos, and deportation.
August 1940: One thousand Jews sent to forced labor camps at Ciechanow.August 23, 1941: Twenty thousand Jews from other Polish towns and villages forced into the sealed off Czestochowa ghetto.
September 22 - October 8, 1942: Thirty-nine thousand Jews deported from Czestochowa ghetto to Treblinka death camp. Residents of orphanages and old age homes killed before deportation.
September, 1942 - January 1945: Three forced labor camps in the region around Czestochowa supplied ten thousand Jews from Poland, Germany, Austria, and Slovakia to work in three German munitions factories, and a steel mill. Few survived the ordeal.
December 1942: A branch of the Jewish resistance group, ZOB (Jewish Fighting Organization) formed, with three hundred members. Attempting resistance to a German raid in January 1943, severe reprisals resulted in many Jewish deaths and deportations.
June 1943: Another ZOB group resisted liquidation of the Czestochowa ghetto.
Source: Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Israel Gutman, Editor in Chief, Macmillan Publishing Company: New York, 1990