Plaszow

GERMAN OCCUPATION OF KRAKOW September 6, 1939 Less than a week after the German invasion of Poland, German forces occupy Krakow (in the southwestern region of the country). The city's 1939 Jewish population is about 56,000. These numbers swell to between 60,000 and 80,000 with the influx of refugees and deportees from western Poland. SEAT OF GENERALGOUVERNEMENT October 26, 1939 German forces in occupied Poland declare Krakow to be the seat of the Government General for the Occupied Polish Territories (the Generalgouvernement; that part of German-occupied Poland not directly incorporated into Germany). The German civilian governor of the Generalgouvernement is Hans Frank, a Nazi lawyer and one of Hitler's legal advisors. He establishes German offices in Wawel Castle in the city center. German civilian, police, and military authorities arrest and kill Polish leaders (politicians, state officials, professionals, intellectuals, and priests) to terrorize Poles into submission. ANTI-JEWISH RESTRICTIONS May 1, 1940 Hans Frank orders a series of restrictions on Jews in Krakow. Hews are forbidden, for example, to use the city's main streets and enter its squares. Also, over the next ten months, the majority of the city's Jewish population will be forced to resettle outside Krakow. GHETTO ORDERED IN KRAKOW March 3, 1941 The German chief municipal administrator for Krakow orders the city's remaining Jews into a ghetto located in the Podgorze section in the southern part of Krakow. The 15,000 Jews remaining in the city will have until March 20 to relocate to the ghetto. By the end of 1941 there will be about 18,000 Jews in the restricted ghetto area, including some 3,000 Jews who "illegally" migrate into the city. "INTELLIGENTSIA OPERATION" March 19, 1942 In what later becomes known as the "intelligentsia operation," SS personnel arrest about 50 prominent Jewish leaders in the Krakow ghetto. The SS deports them to the nearby Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp where they are murdered. ROUNDUPS IN KRAKOW GHETTO May 28, 1942 Special units of the SS, Waffen-SS (armed formations of the SS), and the regular uniformed German police surround the Krakow ghetto. By June 8, 1942, they will have seized between 4,000 and 7,000 Jews and deported them to the Belzec extermination camp. They also shoot 1,000 Jews in the ghetto and at the concentration point in Plaszow during the roundups. The poet Mordecai Gebirtig and Jewish council chairman Artur Rosenzweig are among the victims. DEPORTATIONS FROM KRAKOW October 28, 1942 In a two-day operation, German forces round up between 5,000 and 7,000 Jews from the Krakow ghetto. They deport most of the Jews to the Belzec extermination camp. In the aftermath of the deportations, the Germans divide the Krakow ghetto into two areas, Ghetto A and Ghetto B. RESISTANCE IN KRAKOW December 23, 1942 The Jewish underground in Krakow carries out an attack on German officers sitting in the Cyganeria cafe, outside the ghetto. They kill 11 German officers and wound 13. The Jewish underground, suffering heavy losses in the process, launches about 10 attacks on German forces in the city. In 1944, the surviving resistance fighters will flee occupied Poland, crossing into Slovakia and then Hungary where they continue their resistance activities during the German occupation of Budapest. DESTRUCTION OF KRAKOW GHETTOS March 13, 1943 In a two-day operation, German forces destroy both ghettos in Krakow. The Germans incarcerate Jews from Ghetto A, about 2,000 people, in the Plaszow concentration camp in the southern part of the city. They shoot about 700 Jews during roundups in Ghetto B and deport the remaining 2,300 to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the SS conducts a selection. The SS admits about 500 Jews to the camp as forced laborers. They immediately kill the rest of the deportees in Birkenau's gas chambers. SCHINDLER MOVES WORK FORCE October 21, 1944 As Soviet forces approach Krakow, German industrialist Oskar Schindler moves his Jewish work force from the Plaszow concentration camp to a factory in Bruennlitz in the Sudetenland (part of western Czechoslovakia incorporated into the German Reich in 1938). Schindler prevents the deportation of over 1,000 Jews by claiming that their work is essential to wartime production. The Jews remain under Schindler's protection until their liberation in May 1945. Schindler will escape to western Europe and return to Germany after the war. (In 1962, Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Authority, recognized Schindler as a "Righteous among the Nations" in honor of his rescue efforts.) PLASZOW CONCENTRATION CAMP January 11, 1944 The SS Economic-Administrative Main Office takes over the administration of the Plaszow concentration camp. The SS and police leader in Krakow established Plaszow as a forced-labor camp for Jews in 1942. The camp was built over two Jewish cemeteries in the Podgorze section of Krakow, south of the former ghetto area. The number of prisoners in Plaszow reached its height in 1944. At that time, Plaszow had more than 20,000 prisoners, including more than 10,000 Poles arrested in the aftermath of the failed Polish uprising in Warsaw and about 8,000 Jews from Hungary. The SS summarily shot more than 8,000 prisoners in the camp between 1942 and 1945. SOVIET FORCES APPROACH PLASZOW January 14, 1945 As Soviet forces approach, the SS transports the remaining prisoners from the Plaszow concentration camp in Krakow to the nearby Auschwitz concentration camp. The SS began evacuating prisoners from Plaszow at the approach of Soviet forces in the summer of 1944 but halted that evacuation when the Soviet offensive faltered. SOVIET FORCES LIBERATE KRAKOW January 19, 1945 Soviet forces liberate Krakow. Several hundred Jews survived in Krakow with the help of Zegota (the Polish Council to Aid Jews). Zegota members had helped some Jews find hiding places, false papers, and food. TRIAL OF AMON GOETH August 27, 1946 The trial of SS captain Amon Goeth begins before Poland's Supreme National Tribunal. Goeth, commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp in Krakow, was responsible for the final destruction of the Krakow ghetto. On September 5, 1946, the tribunal finds Goeth guilty of the murder of more than 20,000 people, mostly Jews, and sentences him to death by hanging. The Poles execute Goeth--who remained unrepentant and gave the Nazi salute shortly before his death--in Krakow on September 13, 1946.