During the German invasion of Poland, which started World War II, the Wehrmacht captured the town on September 8, 1939. Afterwards it was occupied by Germany and included within the Radom District of the General Government, formed of German-occupied central Poland. In 1940 the Germans carried out mass arrests of Poles as part of the "AB-Aktion". Poles arrested in March were either deported to Nazi concentration camps or massacred in Góry Wysokie, while those arrested in June were imprisoned and tortured in Skarżysko-Kamienna and then murdered in a forest near Skarżysko-Kamienna. Germans carried out several executions and massacres in the town. On September 30, 1942, 29 Poles, including merchants, teachers and local officials, were hanged at the Market Square. In 1944, the Germans poured corrosive substances into their mass grave in attempt to cover up the crime. Most of the town's Jewish community of app. 11,000 was murdered in the Holocaust in 1943–1944.