On September 3, 1939, during the German invasion of Poland, which started World War II, German troops committed a massacre of 30 Poles in Krzepice (see "Nazi crimes against the Polish nation"). The town was afterwards occupied by Germany until 1945. Krzepice used to have a sizeable Jewish community before the onset of World War II, constituting 43% of the town's total population. In early 1940, the Germans set up an open type ghetto there with about 1,800 inmates, along with Judenrat and the Jewish police. The Jews were forced to perform slave labor until the liquidation of the ghetto in June and July 1942, when most of them were sent in Holocaust trains to Auschwitz extermination camp. Those who remained were deported to the ghetto in Sosnowiec. Only a handful survived the Holocaust and subsequently left Poland. The stone-and-brick Synagogue in Krzepice, built around 1822, still stands although unused and in a dilapidated state. The historic Jewish Cemetery is close by.&lt;ref name="sztetl/krzepice"&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;