Several Jewish relics from before and during the Holocaust were found during ongoing excavations at a building near the Ghetto Fighters’ House in Będzin, Poland, the Cukerman’s Gate Foundation (Fundacja Brama Cukermana) announced in a Tuesday social media post.
The excavations took place in the 100 square meter attic of a building in Będzin where fragments of World War II era documents were discovered by the group in the summer of 2025, ahead of renovations planned for the building.
“The work is extremely difficult,” said the foundation in its statement, explaining how the search takes place in two stages. First, one group removes the floorboards and clears any debris, dirt, or relics left behind. After, the second group carefully sifts through everything removed “centimeter by centimeter, so as not to miss anything of potential historical value.”
Hidden away in a carefully constructed hatch tucked away in the attic, one of the volunteers discovered a small siddur (Jewish prayer book) from 1934.
“Someone had prepared a special place for it in the attic,” the foundation explained. “Behind a separately partitioned space. Under a constructed hatch. Alone. Without other objects. Without rubbish. Without rubble.”
“As if someone had wanted to protect it. As if someone believed that one day, someone would find it.”
Written on one of the pages is the name Moses Merin – the same name as the head of Sosnowiec Ghetto’s Judenrat, who was later murdered in Auschwitz. There is no proof of a connection between the two.
Star of David band, hidden amongst the floorboards
The second discovery, made by Marcin Doś, who documented the entire project, was of a faded gray band bearing a threadbare Star of David.
“It was a moment that cannot be described in words alone,” the foundation said. “Someone once wore this armband. Someone was marked by it. Someone left it here, or hid it.”
Other, much smaller relics were also discovered in the ghetto, including fragments of photographs, post-war and pre-war newspaper scraps, medicine bottles with German writing, as well as fragments of documents, cards, and papers written in Hebrew.
“These [excavations] will continue for several more days, perhaps even a few weeks,” the foundation noted. “We do not know what else we will find. But we know one thing: the House of the Ghetto Fighters is still speaking.”
“We only need to listen patiently, and draw its memory out from beneath layer after layer of dust.”
Bedzin Ghetto’s uprising
The Cukerman’s Gate Foundation was established on March 10, 2009, in order to preserve the synagogue of Bedzin.
In 2024, the foundation gained ownership of the Bedzin Ghetto Fighters’ House, where a local branch of the Jewish Combat Organization (formed in 1941 on the advice of Mordechai Anielewicz, who later fought and was most likely killed during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising), fought back against the Nazis ahead of the ghetto’s liquidation in August 1943.
The Będzin uprising was led by 29-year-old Frumka Płotnicka, who had only weeks earlier fought in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
All of those who fought at the house were killed by the Nazis, and as soon as the uprising ended, the remaining Jewish residents were taken to Auschwitz.
Both Anielewicz and Płotnicka were posthumously awarded the Order of the Cross of Grunwald. Anielewicz also received the Cross of Valor.
The project “The House of the Ghetto Fighters in Będzin — research and documentary and conceptual work on a memorial site, stage 2” is co-financed by Poland’s Culture and National Heritage Ministry.
