Until September 1939 PFA was one of the leading factories in metal sector in Poland, called by foreign industrialists the “Polish economic miracle” of that time. During World War II, after the Wehrmacht trespass on Skarżysko, the factory was taken over by German enterprises – Plant No. 1 company HASAG (Hugo Schneider Aktiengesellschaft) with its HQ in Leipzig, and Plant No. 3 (where the fuses were produced) the company Richling. They also produced, among others, ammunition for the Mauser rifle. The clandestine production of household articles and the secret production of 9 mm pistol ammunition were launched. During the German occupation, Skarżysko was one of the country’s main sources of weapons and ammunition supplies for soldiers of the Underground Poland, and especially to the local partisan units, commanded by, among others Ponury, Nurt and Szary. These troops undertook bold military actions directed against the occupant. New organizations arose in place of those crushed by the Germans. Such conspiratorial and subversive groups also included the Musketeers Group, Command of Poland's Defenders, the National Military Organization and Independent Poland.

 

HASAG concern started producing ammunition for the German army. During the war, HASAG factories not only in Poland, but also in Germany employed a Polish forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners. In September 1942, Polish workers were replaced by Jewish ones and the occupiers established a forced labor camp.

 

The camp consisted of sub-camps located in Werks. The Jewish prisoners of Werk A worked in one of the four departments of the factory: shell and grenade production department, Small ammunition production department, automatic weapons production department and Instrument production department. Production was carried out in a non-stop 12-hour two-shift mode. Werk B produced, among others ammunition for anti-aircraft guns and blank ammunition for small arms. The toughest in terms of working conditions in the camp was Werk C, where workers were forced to fill the projectiles’ shells and mines with TNT and picric acid.

 

In the summer of 1944, the Germans decided to evacuate the Skarżysko factory. It covered not only machines and devices, but also the workers working there. After the initial selection, three groups were formed and the prisoners were transported to the camps in Częstochowa, Leipzig and Buchenwald.

 

The year 1945 in the Factory begins the phased recovery of machinery and equipment from Polish and German territories and the commissioning of the plants. A year later, the foundry and annealing furnace for malleable iron are started up and a thousand wheelbarrows, hundreds of thousands of locks, staples and other tools necessary at that time are produced, and thus the employment is increased to 2300 employees. The use of phosphatization in the production of metal bases was a technological success.

 

Eng. Antoni Kunicki becomes the factory manager.

 

In the 1960s, at the Technical Scientific Institutes in Skarżysko-Kamienna, a monument commemorating 35 thousand people murdered in the forced labor camp in Skarżysko was set up.