History of the Kraków Ghetto

Before the outbreak of the second world war, there were over 64,000 Jews living in Kraków who accounted for approximately 25% of the city's population. After the repeated forced displacements that took place from the beginning of the war, only about 16,000 of them were left. By the ordinance of 3rd March 1941 from the Governor of the Kraków District, Otto Wächter, Jews were forced to move to the district's first "residential area for Jews", established in Podgórze. Published in the official daily, the "Krakauer Zeitung", the ordinance defined the borders of the future ghetto. At the same time, residents of the area and businesses operating within it were forced to leave it by 20th March. Only major manufacturing plant, facilities working for the army, the law court building with its prison, and the only pharmacy run by a Pole, Tadeusz Pankiewicz, were excluded from compliance.

Beginning in April 1941, work on the construction of a 3-metre-high (10 feet) wall with a top formed of a pattern of arches resembling Jewish tombstones - matzevahs - started and continued day and night. The Ghetto was delimited by Kącik, Traugutta, Lwowska and Rękawka streets, the eastern and northern sides of the Market Square of Podgórze, Brodzińskiego, Piwna, Nadwiślańska streets, and Zgody (today's Bohaterów Getta) Square. There were 320 townhouses standing within the area, inhabited by approximately 3500 persons. Initially, after the resettlement, the ghetto became home to 16,000 Jews. After the expansion of the administrative borders of Kraków onto the territory of the neighbouring communes in the latter half of 1941, their number grew to approximately 20,000. This meant barely 2 square metres (22 square feet) per person.

There were four gates leading to the ghetto, with the main one where Limanowskiego Street met the Market Square of Podgórze bearing an inscription Jidiszer wojnbezirk (which is Yiddish for "Jewish residential quarter", as Germans persistently avoided the word "ghetto"). The gates were guarded by guard posts, and leaving was only possible with a pass issued by the German authorities. An exterritorial tram crossed the territory of the ghetto, but did not stop within it. Every day, thousands of people left the ghetto to work in Kraków, but they had to return home by 9pm due to the curfew. From 15th October 1941, every Jew living or remaining outside the ghetto without the right to do so was punishable by death, as were those who gave him shelter. The police were helped by a uniformed Jewish security service Jüdische Ordnungsdienst (OD) armed with clubs and famous for overzealousness and cruelty.

Initially, life in the ghetto bore a semblance of normality. Three synagogues operated, shops and restaurants opened, there was a post office, and even a dance school is rumoured to have been started. Four hospitals admitted patients, there was also a bath, an old people's home, and orphanages. Unfortunately, the first two resettlement actions that took place already in 1942 resulted in the transportation of 14,000 Jews to death camps. After each of these, the area of the ghetto was reduced. When the labour camp in Płaszów was being prepared, the Nazis conducted a two-day long bloodbath known as the liquidation of the ghetto. On the first day, i.e. 13th March 1943, all able-bodied persons were gathered together and marched to the camp in a force of 8000 persons. Those who remained - the old, the ailing, children, and those who did not want to leave them: altogether approximately 2000 persons - were executed on the spot on the following day or transported to Auschwitz.

The only remnants of the ghetto that have survived to this day are two fragments of the ghetto wall: in ul. Lwowska and by a playground behind the school by the Krzemionki crag.