Szczekociny ([ʂt͡ʂɛkɔˈt͡ɕinɨ]) (Yiddish: שטעקעטשין, romanized: Shtshekotshin) is a town on the Pilica river, in Silesian Voivodeship, in southern Poland, with 3,612 inhabitants (2019).

The owners remodelled the local parish church and built a palace, which still exists, and which in 1787 hosted King Stanislaus Augustus.

[3] As punishment for the uprising, in 1870 the Russian authorities demoted Szczekociny to the status of a village, and at that time, first Jews began to settle there.

Following the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland, which started World War II in September 1939, the town was occupied by Germany until 1945.

In the summer of 1944, as part of Operation Tempest, local Home Army units tried to capture Szczekociny, destroying bridges over the Pilica and the Żebrówka rivers.

[5] In 1942 according to the Nazi German plans for the Final Solution, 1,500 Jewish residents of Szczekociny were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp.

[8] Bornstein's son Yossi (founder and CEO of Shizim Group) has been at the forefront of renegotiating the relationship with a renovation of the current cemetery and synagogue, under the now full support of the local mayor.

[10][11][12] Auschwitz survivor Leon Zelman (1928-2007) also writes in the first chapters of his book "Ein Leben nach dem Überleben" about his childhood and youth in Szczekocziny.