Krakow Ghetto - Krakow, Poland - World War II Sites on Waymarking.com

It was established for the purpose of exploitation, terror, and persecution of local Polish Jews, as well as the staging area for separating the "able workers" from those who would later be deemed unworthy of life. The Ghetto was liquidated between June 1942 and March 1943, with most of its inhabitants sent to their deaths at Belzec extermination camp as well as Plaszów slave-labor camp, and Auschwitz concentration camp, 60 kilometres distance.

Before the German-Soviet invasion of 1939, Kraków (Cracow) was an influential centre for the 60,000–80,000 Polish Jews who had lived there since the 13th century. Persecution of the Jewish population of Kraków began immediately after the German troops entered the city on 6 September 1939 in the course of the invasion. Jews were ordered to report for forced labour beginning in September 1939. In November, all Jews twelve years or older were required to wear identifying armbands. Throughout Kraków, synagogues were closed and all their relics and valuables confiscated by the Nazi authorities.

By May 1940, the Nazi occupation authority under Gauleiter Hans Frank announced that Kraków should become the "racially cleanest" city in the General Government (an occupied, but unannexed part of Poland). Massive deportations of Jews from the city were ordered. Of the more than 68,000 Jews in Kraków when the Germans invaded, only 15,000 workers and their families were permitted to remain. All other Jews were ordered out of the city, to be resettled into surrounding rural areas of the Generalgouvernement.

The Kraków Ghetto was formally established on 3 March 1941 in the Podgórze district. Displaced Polish families from Podgórze took up residences in the former Jewish dwellings outside the newly established Ghetto. Meanwhile, 15,000 Jews were crammed into an area previously inhabited by 3,000 people who used to live in a district consisting of 30 streets, 320 residential buildings, and 3,167 rooms. As a result, one apartment was allocated to every four Jewish families, and many less fortunate lived on the street.

The Ghetto was surrounded by the newly built walls that kept it separated from the rest of the city. In a grim foreshadowing of the near future, these walls contained brick panels in the shape of tombstones. All windows and doors that opened onto the "Aryan" side were ordered to be bricked up. Only four guarded entrances allowed traffic to pass in or out. Small sections of the wall still remain today, one part is fitted with a memorial plaque, which reads ""Here they lived, suffered and perished at the hands of Hitler's executioners. From here they began their final journey to the death camps.".

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Date Logged Log User Rating   06/15/2013 matefreund visited it