Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp

Originally intended as a forced labor camp, the Płaszów concentration camp was constructed on the grounds of two former Jewish cemeteries. It was populated with prisoners during the liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto¹. One of the Commanders of the camp was Amon Goeth, the villain in the movie Schindler’s List

Amon Leopold Goeth was camp commander of the Plaszow concentration camp from February 1943 until September 1944. In the photograph he can be seen standing on his balcony preparing to shoot prisoners.²

Actor Ralph *Fiennes* playing Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List

While visiting Kraków Poland and waiting for my trip to Auschwitz Memorial Museum, I took a quick tram ride to the south of the city to visit Kraków-Płaszów memorial. There was some construction when I visited , but still opened.

Using local transportation in between sites

I use local tram to get to site. Picture from US Holocaust Memorial Museum

One of the first tasks assigned to the prisoners was the leveling of the cemeteries. The headstones from the graves were removed and used as paving in front of the offices and residences belonging to German officers. Bodies uncovered during the destruction of the cemetery were removed and thrown into mass graves. Most of the work had to be performed very quickly; prisoners ran, whilst the SS shouted, screamed orders, and threatened to shoot them.
H.E.A.R.T

Two Jewish cemeteries, located next to each other and a abandoned quarry became the site of the camp

Jewish Tombstones were used for roads and paths

Kraków Ghetto

The once large Kraków Jewish population have never recovered since the war.

In October 1939, the Nazis registered 68,482 Jews in Kraków.

Nazi authorities ordered the resettlement of Kraków’s Jews to make a “Jew-free city”

Wall built with forced labour to contain the Jewish population in a Ghetto. The tombstone like shape of the wall is not lost on me. Typical of Nazi mockery and cruelty.

“Here they lived, suffered and died at the hands of the German torturers. From here they began their final journey to the death camps.”

Building the ghetto wall in Krzemionki; 1941.³

Residents of the Ghetto began commuting daily to work on the construction of Płaszów labor camp, and after Amon Goeth arrived in Kraków as its new Camp Commandant the pace of the camp’s development hastened the ghetto’s demise and it’s eventual liquidation.

The liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto in March 14 1943 is the subject of a 15-minute segment of the film Schindler’s List . Nazi soldiers surrounded the ghetto herding the residents to waiting rail cars. Thousands who resisted were shot. Approximately 3000 went directly to the gas chambers in Auschwitz and others to the Płaszów labor camp

Looting the houses, stripping the luggage of anything valuable the ghetto is closed

Schindler sees a girl in red during the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto. The red coat is one of the few instances of color used in this predominantly black and white film.

The Camp

The camp housed about 2,000 inmates when it opened. At its peak of operations in 1944, a staff of 636 guards oversaw 25,000 permanent inmates, and an additional 150,000 people passed through the camp in its role as a transit camp. Goeth personally murdered prisoners on a daily basis. His two dogs, Rolf and Ralf, were trained to tear inmates to death. He shot people from the window of his office if they appeared to be moving too slowly or resting in the yard. He shot to death a Jewish cook because the soup was too hot. He brutally mistreated his two maids.⁴

The balcony of Amon Göth’s villa in Płaszów

Roll call area with Grey house in background

Memorial at Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp

Hope

In October 1939, Oskar Schindler established his own factory in a run-down former Jewish enamel works at 4 Lipowa Street, assisted by Itzhak Stern, a clever Jewish accountant. In 1942, 370 Jews were employed along with 430 Polish workers. When the Krakow ghetto was liquidated in March 1943, Jews were either sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, to Płaszów, or were killed on the spot. Schindler took advantage of his good relations with Amon Göth, one of the liquidators of the ghetto in Krakow, and the commandant of Płaszów forced labor camp, to arrange for workers from Płaszów to work in his factory. There he employed around 900 workers, most of them Jewish, who had no previous experience of this type of work.

Oskar Schindler’s Factory front gates in 2020

Oskar Schindler’s Factory front gates memorial

I will not go into detail and the horrors committed here and in the ghettos. There is lots online about it. The movie Schindler’s List (1993) gives a good sense of what happened here.

Non remorseful and ” I was just following orders “Goth was sentenced to death and was hanged on 13 September 1946 at the Montelupich Prison in Kraków, not far from the site of the Plaszów camp. Goeth’s last words were “Heil Hitler”. His remains were cremated and the ashes scattered in the Vistula River.⁵

Schindler’s grave in Jerusalem. The Hebrew inscription reads: “Righteous Among the Nations”; the German inscription reads: “The Unforgettable Lifesaver of 1200 Persecuted Jews”.⁶