Over 60,000 Jews were to be crammed into a small area in the district of Podgorze. Many made the short journey to Podgórze by crossing the bridge over the Vistula river from the old Jewish distict of Kazimierz.
The ghetto was strategically situated near the industrial district and its' many factories, including the now famous 'Schindler's factory', the ghetto inhabitants would become a cheap source of forced labour. Plaszow concentration camp was nearby and the adjoining Zablocie train station would feature in future deportations.
Previously inhabited by just over 3, 000 people, the Krakow Ghetto was spread over a few dozen streets in and around Zgody Square, containing some 320 tenement buildings.
A 9ft high wall was built around the perimeter of the Krakow Ghetto, crowned by arcs reminiscent of Jewish tombstones. Living behind a wall that looked like tombstones must have been psychological torture for those inside. Windows facing onto the outside world were bricked up and the gates were strictly policed. Only a small fragment of the original wall remains today.
Entrance to the Ghetto.
The wall today
Life in the Krakow Ghetto was a constant struggle: food was scarce and hunger became the gravest affliction; sanitation was sorely inadequate and the German command grew increasingly brutal and inhumane. The German authorities already rigorously rationed food in Poland and they decreed that the ghetto Jews might survive on as little as one hundred grams of bread per day and two hundred grams of sugar or fat per month.
The ghetto was a hellish twilight place, a shadowy realm of adversity, horror, and human depravity only fleetingly illumed by acts of great courage and compassion. Over the two years of its existence several thousand residents of the ghetto were either killed or died of hunger.
Inhabitants of the Krakow ghetto found some relief via ‘The Eagle Pharmacy’: situated at the heart of Podgorze (18 Zgody Square, now Bohaterow Getta Square), the German authorities made the almost unprecedented ruling of allowing this business to continue even once the area was turned into a ghetto. Its owner, Tadeusz Pankiewicz was the only gentile (non-Jewish) to live in the Krakow Ghetto on a permanent basis.
The Eagle Pharmacy quickly became a hangout for the Jewish intellegensia, who would gather there to debate, sociailse and even entertain. During selections for deportations, many were able to hide there and if needs be escape by the rear exit. Food, valuables, and letters were smuggled in and out of the Krakow Ghetto via the pharmacy, which was treated as a kind of depository.
In 1983 Tadeusz was honoured by Israel by being made one of the Righteous Among Nations. In 2004 with aid from both Roman Polanski (who escaped the Krakow Ghetto as a child) and Steven Spielberg, the pharmacy enjoyed a complete restoration and is now a branch of the ‘Historical Museum of the City of Krakow.’
The Eagle Pharmacy today.
In January 1942 the Wannsee conference in Berlin decided upon the ‘Final Solution’: the systematic annihilation of the Jews of Europe.
On May 30, the ghetto dwellers without identity cards were rounded up on Plac Bohaterow Getta square and roughly 4,000 of them left for the Belzec death camp to perish. SS storm troopers killed some 600 Jews on the streets of the ghetto on June 4. By the end of June the Nazis formally decreased the area of the Krakow Ghetto.
On October 28, such 'excessive' ghetto residents such as the sick, the old, the handicapped and little children became the target. 600 were murdered outright and about 4,500 shipped by train to Belzec concentration camp.
From November onwards the Nazis were transferring Jewish labourers from the ghetto to the nearby Plaszow camp.
Plaszow camp - from Schindlers' exhibition
On March 13, 1943 so-called Ghetto A was closed down and all remaining Jewish workers imprisoned in the Plaszow concentration camp. Next day the SS troops emptied Ghetto B, killing its Jewish inhabitants in their homes and in the streets. Several hundred Jews were trucked to the notorious Auschwitz death camp in Oswiecim.
Those killed in the liquidation of Krakow Ghetto were buried in mass graves at the Płaszow labour camp. However, Amon Göth, the commandant of Płaszow, later received orders from Berlin to exume, incinerate and destroy the incriminating remains..
Plaszow today is an overgown, silent place. Only a short stroll from the Ghetto.
The ransacking of the Krakow Ghetto continued till December 1943.
Plac Bohaterow Getta square, (Ghetto Heroes Square), is now a monument commemorating the Jewish ghetto and the Krakow Jews.
Ghetto Heroes Square
The design includes 33 large empty bronze chairs and 37 smaller chairs located on the edge of the square and at the tram stops.
The Memorial also includes a mark on the pavement which shows where the walls of the Ghetto were formerly located and a small building where visitors may light candles in honour of the murdered Jews.
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