On this day, the Nazi occupiers of Poland opened the first ghetto within the country.
The ghetto was located in Piotrków Trybunalski, a city in the Łódź province in central Poland. Piotrków Trybunalski had a thriving Jewish community. The German authorities intended to move local Jewish citizens into the ghetto immediately, but it would prove difficult to encourage Jews to volunteer to move into an area originally occupied by 6,000 free residents before the ghetto was formed. First, a Jewish Council was created to convince Jews to move into the ghetto. When that failed, the Germans decided to force Jews to relocate.
The ghetto accepted new Jews for three years, during which up to 28,000 Jews travelled through the ghetto. By October 1942, the ghetto began to close and the Jews held inside were sent onwards to death camps.
