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The Krakow ghetto in German-occupied Poland held over 15,000 Jews. Learn more about Krakow and the ghetto’s history during the Holocaust and WWII.
Explore a timeline of key events during the history of the Krakow ghetto in German-occupied Poland.
A Jewish man deported from Vienna, Austria, performs forced labor in the Opole Lubelskie ghetto. Poland, date uncertain.
Jewish children in an orphanage operated by the Jewish council of the Vilna ghetto. Vilna, 1942.
Learn more about resistance in some of the smaller ghettos of eastern Europe in the face of overwhelming odds and desperate scenarios.
View of a barbed-wire fence separating part of the ghetto in Krakow from the rest of the city. Krakow, Poland, date uncertain. During the Holocaust, the creation of ghettos was a key step in the Nazi process of brutally separating, persecuting, and ultimately destroying Europe's Jews. Ghettos were often enclosed districts that isolated Jews from the non-Jewish population and from other Jewish communities.
Felix was born to an assimilated Jewish family in Lublin, Poland. His father was a locksmith and his mother was a singer. Following the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, Felix fled east to Rovno and then to Soviet-occupied Lvov, where he was accepted at a medical school. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Felix was taken to a labor camp. He escaped and returned to Lublin, and found that his family had been forced into the ghetto established there. After the…
Aron was born to a middle-class Jewish family in Slonim, a part of Poland between the two world wars. His parents owned a clothing store. After studying in a technical school, Aron worked as a motion-picture projectionist in a small town near Slonim. The Soviet army took over Slonim in September 1939. War broke out between Germany and the Soviet Union in June 1941. Aron returned to Slonim. The Germans soon occupied Slonim, and later forced the Jews into a ghetto. Aron was forced to work in an armaments…
Lucine was born to a Jewish family in Lublin. Her father was a court interpreter and her mother was a dentist. War began with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Lucine's home was raided by German forces shortly thereafter. Soon after the German occupation of Lublin, Jews there were forced to wear a compulsory badge identifying them as Jews. A ghetto in Lublin was closed off in January 1942. Lucine survived a series of killing campaigns and deportations from the ghetto during March and…
Describes the German destruction of the Slonim ghetto
Guta and her family fled to Starachowice, Poland. There, the Germans ordered them and other Jews into a ghetto and put them to work in forced-labor factories. As an act of resistance at the Majowka camp, Guta attacked a Nazi guard preparing to shoot her and other prisoners at a mass grave. A bullet grazed her, but Guta pretended to be fatally wounded. Days later, Guta was deported to Auschwitz, then Ravensbrueck, where she was liberated. Her mother died only weeks short of freedom.
The Jewish children of Lodz suffered unfolding harsh realities after the German invasion of Poland. Some of them, including Dawid Sierakowiak, recorded their experiences in diaries.
Henny was born into an upper-middle-class Jewish family in Kovno, Lithuania. She and her brother attended private schools. In June 1940 the Soviets occupied Lithuania, but little seemed to change until the German invasion in June 1941. The Germans sealed off a ghetto in Kovno in August 1941. Henny and her family were forced to move into the ghetto. Henny married in the ghetto in November 1943; her dowry was a pound of sugar. She survived several roundups during which some of her friends and family were…
In 1939, Gerda's brother was deported for forced labor. In June 1942, Gerda's family was deported from the Bielsko ghetto. While her parents were transported to Auschwitz, Gerda was sent to the Gross-Rosen camp system, where for the remainder of the war she performed forced labor in textile factories. Gerda was liberated after a death march, wearing the ski boots her father insisted would help her to survive. She married her American liberator.
World War II began in September 1939. Brigitte and her family moved to Kovno, hoping to secure visas and passports for travel to North America. In July 1941, Brigitte and her family were forced to move into the Kovno ghetto after the Germans occupied Lithuania. Brigitte's family survived the "Great Action," but her mother died of illness in the ghetto. After a roundup targeting children in March 1944, Brigitte escaped from the ghetto with the help of a former employee of her father. Soviet forces liberated…
In 1938-39, Hungary annexed the area of Czechoslovakia in which Helen lived. After Germany occupied Hungary in 1944, Helen and her family were deported to the Uzhgorod ghetto. As Jews, they were soon transferred to various camps, where much of the family perished. Although at times Helen was too weak to walk, she and her older sister survived Auschwitz, forced labor at a camp munitions factory, and Bergen-Belsen.
In 1942, Hana was confined with other Jews to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where she worked as a nurse. There, amid epidemics and poverty, residents held operas, debates, and poetry readings. In 1944, she was deported to Auschwitz. After a month there, she was sent to Sackisch, a Gross-Rosen subcamp, where she made airplane parts at forced labor. She was liberated in May 1945.
Jewish women return to the Kovno ghetto after forced labor on the outside. They line up to be searched by German and Lithuanian guards. Kovno, Lithuania, between 1941 and 1944.
While living in hiding on the Aryan side of Warsaw, Benjamin Miedzyrzecki (Ben Meed) returns to the site of the Warsaw ghetto, where he poses among the ruins. Warsaw, Poland, 1944.
Upon her father's death, Judith and her family moved to Kovno. Soon, they were confined to the ghetto, which the Germans formed in 1941. Judith, her mother and sister were deported to Stutthof, where her mother died. Judith and her sister escaped from a death march out of Stutthof. They posed as non-Jews, found farm work and eventual refuge in Denmark. Their brother survived Dachau.
German soldiers capture Jews hiding in a bunker during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Warsaw, Poland, April–May 1943.
During the Warsaw ghetto uprising, German soldiers round up Jews in factories for deportation. Warsaw ghetto, Poland, April or May 1943.
After the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, Dora's family fled to Vilna, Lithuania. When the Germans occupied Vilna, Dora's father was shot and the rest of the family was confined in the Vilna ghetto. Dora, her sister, and her mother were deported to the Kaiserwald camp in Latvia and then to the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig. Her mother and sister perished in Stutthof. Dora herself was shot immediately before liberation, but she survived.
Blanka was an only child in a close-knit family in Lodz, Poland. Her father died in 1937. After the German invasion of Poland, Blanka and her mother remained in Lodz with Blanka's grandmother, who was unable to travel. Along with other relatives, they were forced into the Lodz ghetto in 1940. There, Blanka worked in a bakery. She and her mother later worked in a hospital in the Lodz ghetto, where they remained until late 1944 when they were deported to the Ravensbrueck camp in Germany. From Ravensbrueck,…
Jewish homes in flames after the Nazis set residential buildings on fire in an effort to force Jews out of hiding during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Poland, April 19–May 16, 1943.
Vladka belonged to the Zukunft youth movement of the Bund (the Jewish Socialist party). She was active in the Warsaw ghetto underground as a member of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB). In December 1942, she was smuggled out to the Aryan, Polish side of Warsaw to try to obtain arms and to find hiding places for children and adults. She became an active courier for the Jewish underground and for Jews in camps, forests, and other ghettos.
Jews from the Lodz ghetto are loaded onto freight trains for deportation to the Chelmno killing center. Lodz, Poland, 1942–44.
Jews captured by German troops during the Warsaw ghetto uprising in April–May 1943. This photograph appeared in the Stroop Report, an album compiled by SS Major General Juergen Stroop, commander of German forces that suppressed the Warsaw ghetto uprising. The album was introduced as evidence at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. In the decades since the trial this photo has become one of the iconographic images of the Holocaust.
Young German soldiers assist in the deportation of Jews from the Zychlin ghetto to the Chelmno killing center. The Nazis planned this deportation to fall on the Jewish holiday of Purim. Poland, March 3, 1942.
Portrait of the Weidenfeld family wearing Jewish badges in the Czernowitz (Cernauti) ghetto shortly before their deportation to Transnistria. Pictured from left to right are Yetty, Meshulem-Ber, Sallie, and Simche Weidenfeld. Cernauti, Romania, October 1941.
Young Jewish men and women pose for a photograph in the Piotrkow Trybunalski ghetto. Poland, 1940. Pictured from left to right are: Abram Zarnowiecki, Rozia Zarnowiecki, Mania Freiberger, Moniek, Rachel Zarnowiecki, and Chaim Zarnowiecki. All those pictured died in the Holocaust.
Vladka belonged to the Zukunft youth movement of the Bund (the Jewish Socialist party). She was active in the Warsaw ghetto underground as a member of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB). In December 1942, she was smuggled out to the Aryan, Polish side of Warsaw to try to obtain arms and to find hiding places for children and adults. She became an active courier for the Jewish underground and for Jews in camps, forests, and other ghettos.
Vladka belonged to the Zukunft youth movement of the Bund (the Jewish Socialist party). She was active in the Warsaw ghetto underground as a member of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB). In December 1942, she was smuggled out to the Aryan, Polish side of Warsaw to try to obtain arms and to find hiding places for children and adults. She became an active courier for the Jewish underground and for Jews in camps, forests, and other ghettos.
Jews captured by the SS during the Warsaw ghetto uprising are interrogated beside the ghetto wall before being sent to the Umschlagplatz, the assembly point for deportation from the ghetto. The original German caption reads: "Search and Interrogation." Poland, May 1943.
Jewish deportees from Luxembourg, Austria, and Czechoslovakia during deportation from the Lodz ghetto to the Chelmno killing center. Lodz, Poland, 1942.
Beginning in 1941, the Germans deported Jews in Germany to the occupied eastern territories. At first, they deported thousands of Jews to ghettos in Poland and the Baltic states. Those deported would share the fate of local Jews. Later, many deportation transports from Germany went directly to the killing centers in occupied Poland. In this footage, a German propaganda unit films recent arrivals from Magdeburg, Germany, in a collection center run by the Jewish council in the Warsaw ghetto. In July 1942,…
Victims of German SS and Hungarian Arrow Cross terror in the Budapest ghetto. The bodies were found in the courtyard of the Pestor synagogue on Dohany Street. Budapest, Hungary, January 1945.
The Germans occupied Riga in 1941, and confined the Jews to a ghetto. In late 1941, at least 25,000 Jews from the ghetto were massacred at the Rumbula forest, near Riga. Steven and his brother were sent to a small ghetto for able-bodied men. In 1943 Steven was deported to the Kaiserwald camp and sent to a nearby work camp. In 1944 he was transferred to Stutthof and forced to work in a shipbuilding firm. In 1945, Steven and his brother survived a death march and were liberated by Soviet forces.
Both of Charlene's parents were local Jewish community leaders, and the family was active in community life. Charlene's father was a professor of philosophy at the State University of Lvov. World War II began with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Charlene's town was in the part of eastern Poland occupied by the Soviet Union under the German-Soviet Pact of August 1939. Under the Soviet occupation, the family remained in its home and Charlene's father continued to teach. The Germans…
Henny was born into an upper-middle-class Jewish family in Kovno, Lithuania. She and her brother attended private schools. In June 1940 the Soviets occupied Lithuania, but little seemed to change until the German invasion in June 1941. The Germans sealed off a ghetto in Kovno in August 1941. Henny and her family were forced to move into the ghetto. Henny married in the ghetto in November 1943; her dowry was a pound of sugar. She survived several roundups during which some of her friends and family were…
Ernest's family owned a factory that made matzah, the unleavened bread eaten during Passover. In February 1939, three months after Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass" pogroms), Ernest and his mother fled to Shanghai, one of few havens for refugees without visas. His father and sister stayed behind in Germany; they perished during the Holocaust. A brother escaped to England. Ernest and his mother found work in Shanghai. In 1947, he came to the United States with his wife, whom he met and married in…
Leah grew up in Praga, a suburb of Warsaw, Poland. She was active in the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir Zionist youth movement. Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Jews were forced to live in the Warsaw ghetto, which the Germans sealed off in November 1940. In the ghetto, Leah lived with a group of Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir members. In September 1941, she and other members of the youth group escaped from the ghetto to a Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir farm in Zarki, near Czestochowa, Poland. In May 1942, Leah became a courier…
David was born to a middle class Jewish family and attended a Jewish school. In August 1941, after the Germans occupied Kovno, he was forced into the Kovno ghetto, where he shared two rooms with his immediate and extended family. Many members of his extended family were killed during the Great Aktion in Kovno in October 1941. David worked in a forced-labor brigade in the ghetto. In March 1944, he witnessed the Kinder Aktion and was able to save his nephew. During the destruction of the Kovno ghetto, David…
This photograph shows the Rudnicki Street entrance to the Vilna ghetto. The signs on the fence claim there is danger of contagion and prohibit the bringing of food or wood into the ghetto. Photograph taken in 1941–42.
Lisa was one of three children born to a religious Jewish family. Following the German occupation of her hometown in 1939, Lisa and her family moved first to Augustow and then to Slonim (in Soviet-occupied eastern Poland). German troops captured Slonim in June 1941, during the invasion of the Soviet Union. In Slonim, the Germans established a ghetto which existed from 1941 to 1942. Lisa eventually escaped from Slonim, and went first to Grodno and then to Vilna, where she joined the resistance movement. She…
A pair of shoes left behind after a deportation action in the Kovno ghetto. Photographer George Kadish captioned the photo "The body is gone." Kovno, Lithuania, circa 1943.
Two young cousins shortly before they were smuggled out of the Kovno ghetto. A Lithuanian family hid the children and both girls survived the war. Kovno, Lithuania, August 1943.
Vladka belonged to the Zukunft youth movement of the Bund (the Jewish Socialist party). She was active in the Warsaw ghetto underground as a member of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB). In December 1942, she was smuggled out to the Aryan, Polish side of Warsaw to try to obtain arms and to find hiding places for children and adults. She became an active courier for the Jewish underground and for Jews in camps, forests, and other ghettos.
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