No Jews were recorded in Sosnowiec until 1859, when the formerly Polish region was absorbed into the Russian Empire. Within the next few decades, dozens more Jewish residents arrived seeking opportunities at the newly opened railway station or in related industries such as coal mining.

The town’s Jewish cemetery was established in 1893 and the Great Synagogue was completed in 1896. By 1897 the approximately 2,300 Jews of the town represented a little more than six percent of the total population of about 36,300. The Jewish community suffered periodic outbreaks of antisemitic attacks. One occurred during the Jewish New Year in 1903 when some Polish workers threw stones at Jewish citizens. Around the same period, many Jews joined the growing Zionist movement that advocated for the creation of an independent Jewish state in the Middle East.

Jewish residents in Sosnowiec played an active role in strikes for higher wages and other workers’ rights which were often violently suppressed by Russian authorities. The city experienced additional hardship during World War I (1914-1918), especially after the German army occupied the city in 1915 and more than 20 factories were looted and destroyed.

After the war, Sosnowiec became part of the newly independent country of Poland. In the 1920s, the Jewish community made up around 15 percent of the city’s total population. Its thriving culture included a number of Jewish schools, multiple Yiddish-language newspapers, a Maccabi sports club and at least one charitable organization.

Jewish religious life centered around the many prayer houses of the city. Survivor Rubin Samelson remembered that most Jewish families followed traditional Orthodox customs and kept kosher at home “because that’s what everybody did and didn’t know anything else.”

As the economy recovered, the Jewish community organized its own trade union and credit fund in 1927. Many Jews worked in fields such as construction and carpentry, including Samelson’s grandfather. Samelson remembered his grandfather made everything by hand using “no machine tools.” Others, like Samelson’s father, worked as tailors or as grocers or mechanics.

Tragically, this period of flourishing Jewish cultural life was not to last. Violence against Jews escalated throughout the 1930s, especially after Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany in 1933. Jews were beaten during an antisemitic demonstration in 1931 and from 1935 to 1938 three bombs were placed in synagogues and prayer houses.

World War II started when German forces invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, reaching Sosnowiec on September 4. Within a week the Great Synagogue was blown up and its ruins demolished. Under Nazi occupation, Orthodox Jews in Sosnowiec were forced to cut off their beards and payot (side curls) and Jewish property was confiscated. Jews were made to perform hard physical labor and in 1941 some were sent to help build the facilities of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex. Deportations to the killing center began the next year. Any who remained in 1943 were forced into one of two Jewish ghettos in the city. On January 15, 1944, any surviving Jews found in Sosnowiec were sent to Auschwitz.

In less than five years the prewar Jewish population of nearly 29,000 people had been annihilated. Today, no trace of the Great Synagogue remains at what is now a covered outdoor marketplace.