(Section 2 of Traveling Exhibit)
With German occupation, life in Będzin changed dramatically. Several days after occupation of the town, German forces set the Great Synagogue and the surrounding Jewish neighborhood on fire, killing at least sixty people. Curfews and discrimination soon dominated daily life.
The Germans soon began to segregate Jewish people from their Polish neighbors, first within certain areas of Będzin, later by creating a Jewish ghetto (Kamionka) just outside of town. The Nazi occupiers also set up an administration made of Jewish elders, called the Jewish Council, or Judenrat. Their Nazi-enforced task was to oversee the Jewish community and help implement various measures. Squads of Jewish ghetto police aided the Councils by assisting the Nazi orders to round up and terrorize their fellow Jews. The head of the Jewish council for the region of Będzin and the nearby city of Sosnowiec was Moshe Merin, a controversial figure.
With the military invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Nazi Germany escalated the violence against the local population