Former Jewish Ghetto in Kraków (1939-1943) (Kraków) | Second World War 1939-1945, Holocaust, residential neighbourhood, jews

 Second World War 1939-1945, ghetto, Holocaust, residential neighbourhood, jews

Nazi officials of occupied Poland (called by the Germans the General Government) established the Kraków Ghetto on 3 March 1941. Circa 1940, over 65,000 Jews lived in the city, but Nazi deportations left only around 15,000 ---and they were packed into the walled Ghetto area in a space originally meant for 3,000 inhabitants. Building doors and windows giving access to the non-Ghetto city were bricked-up.

Four gatehouses controlled access to the outside world. Some Ghetto Jews used for industrial slave labor survived by being tasked to work at the nearby enamelware factory run by Oscar Schindler ---some of their stories are dramatized in the film "Schindler's List".

After early 1942, Nazis began Aktion Krakau: an operation meant to liquidate the internees. 11,000 Jews were transported by rail to the Belzec death camp to be gassed. In 1943, 8,000 Jews considered able-bodied were sent to the nearby Plaszow labor camp; the remaining 2,000 were killed within the Ghetto. Shortly afterward, the isolated survivors were rooted out and sent to Auschwitz to be gassed.

See also:

Oscar Schindler Enamel Works (WWII Nazi Labor Camp) DEF / Kraków Zabłocie
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Kraków-Płaszów / Plaszow (WWII Nazi Concentration Camp)
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Belzec / Bełżec (WWII Nazi Death Camp)
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Auschwitz (WWII Nazi Death camp)
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