[4] During the invasion of Poland, the German Panzer Division Kempf rolled into Siedlce on 12 September 1939 after a fierce battle along the Bug River with the Polish Modlin Army which surrendered soon afterwards.

[5] On Christmas Eve the Nazis set fire to the synagogue and burned it to the ground, notably with Jewish refugees inside.

[7] The ghetto was closed off by a barbed wire fence, and cut off from the outside world on 1 October 1941 with only three gates leading out, guarded by Nazi patrols.

[2] In early 1942 the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was set in motion by Nazi Germany during the Wannsee Conference; and the fate of ghettoised Jews across occupied Poland was sealed.

[8] The Treblinka extermination camp – built north of Siedlce exclusively for the implementation of Operation Reinhard – began gassing Jews in July 1942.

[2] People unable to move and attempting to hide were shot in their homes by the roaming squads of Trawniki men aided by the Orpo battalion who arrived in Siedlce from Łosice for that express purpose.

[10] Around 10,000 Jews were herded into the square on 22 August, including all captives brought on foot by Orpo from the transit ghettos in three nearby settlements;[d][10] 500 men were selected to go back to their work camps.

The next day they were assembled into columns and marched to the train station in utter terror; the connecting streets were full of dead bodies.

Their bodies were nefariously not buried, but sent to Treblinka in a freight train consisting of 40 wagons of corpses, which outraged the SS at the killing factory.

The incident was described by Sonderkommando prisoner Samuel Willenberg who successfully escaped during the perilous Treblinka revolt,[13] and who took part in the unloading of the freight cars.

[15] One of the survivors, Yisrael Kravitz, published his memoires in 1971 as the Five Years of Living Hell under Nazi Rule in the City of Siedlce.

[16] Throughout the existence of the ghetto, there were numerous escape and rescue attempts even though the exact numbers of Jewish survivors are unclear.

Sixteen survivors found refuge at the home of the Osiński family nearby, awarded medals of the Righteous Among the Nations in 1990 some fifty years after the fact.

[18] Financial help for the purchase of food was provided by the clandestine Żegota Council to Aid Jews,[18] whose president Julian Grobelny lived 40 kilometres (25 mi) east of Siedlce.

[20] Little Rachela was whisked to Zakrzówek in the summer of 1943 and survived in the care of Zofia Glazer (pl), and one of the Zawadzki sisters; all recognized as the Righteous in 1988.