Krzepice is a Polish town near Częstochowa, in Kłobuck County, Silesian Voivodeship, in northwestern corner of Lesser Poland. It is located near the historic border of Lesser Poland and Silesia, which goes along the Liswarta river. A few kilometers to the northwest, Lesser Poland meets another historic province of the country, Greater Poland. For centuries, until 1793 (see Partitions of Poland), the town belonged to Lelów County of Kraków Voivodeship. Annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia as part of New Silesia, in 1807 it was passed to the Duchy of Warsaw, and then Congress Poland. In 1918 it returned to Poland, and was part of Kielce Voivodeship. After World War Two, Krzepice remained in Kielce Voivodeship until 1950, when it became part of Katowice Voivodeship. The town is home to a sports club Liswarta, established in 1946.
The name Krzepice, mentioned for the first time in 1356 as Crzepycze, comes from a last name Krzepa; most probably, members of this family lived in the area of the town. In a Latin language medieval chronicle of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Wrocław (Liber fundationis episcopatus Vratislaviensis), written in 1295-1305, Krzepice is spelled Crippicz antiquum.
Krzepice had a large 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, but in a very dilapidated state. The historic Jewish Cemetery is close by.