Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp

Płaszów concentration camp

Major Nazi German concentration camps in occupied Poland (marked with squares)

The Płaszów (Polish pronunciation: [ˈpwaʂuf]) or Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp (German language: Konzentrationslager Plaszow) was a Nazi German labour and concentration camp built by the SS in Płaszów, a southern suburb of Kraków (now part of Podgórze district), soon after the German invasion of Poland and the subsequent creation of the General Government.

The Płaszów camp, originally intended as a forced labour camp, was constructed on the grounds of two former Jewish cemeteries (see, New Jewish Cemetery) in 11 March 1943 during Nazi German occupation of Poland, with deportations of the Jews from the Kraków Ghetto beginning 28 October 1942. In 1943 the camp was expanded and turned into one of many KL concentration camps.

Camp operation

The camp was notorious for horrible terrors. Commanding the camp was Amon Göth, an SS commandant from Vienna who was known for being uncommonly sadistic in his treatment and killing of prisoners; "Witnesses say he would never start his breakfast without shooting at least one person." On 13 March 1943, he personally oversaw the liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto nearby, forcing its Jewish inhabitants deemed capable of work into the KL Plaszow camp. Those who were declared unfit for work were either sent to Auschwitz or shot on the spot. Under him were the staff of 206 Ukrainian SS personnel from Trawniki, followed by 600 Germans of the SS-Totenkopfverbände (1943–1944), and a few SS women, including Gertrud Heise, Luise Danz and Alice Orlowski.

Kraków-Płaszów

The balcony of Amon Goeth's house in Płaszów, from which Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig said Goeth would shoot at prisoners. Later, he used to step outside to hunt humans, with his Tyrolean hat marking his intentions. It was the signal for seasoned prisoners to attempt to hide.

The camp was a slave Arbeitslager ("labour camp"), supplying manpower to several armament factories and a stone quarry. The death rate in the camp was very high. Many prisoners, including many children and women, died of typhus, starvation and executions. Płaszów camp became particularly infamous for both individual and mass shootings carried out there. Using Hujowa Górka, a large hill close to the camp commonly used for executions, some 8,000 deaths took place outside the camp’s fences with prisoners trucked in 3 to 4 times weekly. The covered lorries from Kraków used to arrive in the morning. The condemned were walked into a trench of the Hujowa Górka hillside and shot, bodies then covered with dirt, layer upon layer. In early 1944 all corpses were exhumed and burnt in a heap to hide the evidence. Witnesses later attested that 17 truckloads of human ashes were removed from the burning site, and scattered over the area.

All documents pertaining to the mass killings and executions were entrusted by commandant Göth to a high ranking female member of the SS, Kommandoführerin Alice Orlowski. She held these documents in her possession until the end of the war, then allegedly destroyed them. Alice Orlowski, a picture-perfect SS-woman, was known for her whippings especially of young women across their eyes. At roll call she would walk through the lines of women, and personally whip them.

Płaszów Memorial (erected in 1964)

The sign at the main entrance to the Płaszów camp memorial area

During July and August 1944 a number of transports of prisoners left KL Plaszow for Auschwitz, Stutthof, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen and other camps. In January 1945, the last of the remaining inmates and camp staff, left the camp on a death march to Auschwitz, including several female SS guards. Many of those who survived the march were killed upon arrival. When the Nazis realized that the Soviets were already approaching Kraków, they completely dismantled the camp, leaving an empty field in its place. The bodies that were buried there earlier in various mass graves were all exhumed and burned on site. On 20 January 1945 the Red Army had reached only a tract of barren land.

The area which held the camp now consists of sparsely wooded hills and fields with one large memorial to all the victims and two smaller monuments (one to the Jewish victims specifically, and another to the Hungarian Jewish victims) at one perimeter of where the camp once stood. An additional small monument located near the opposite end of the site stands in memory of the first execution of Polish (non-Jewish) prisoners in 1939. A version of the camp is featured in the movie Schindler's List about the life of Oskar Schindler.

See also

• List of subcamps of Kraków-Płaszów
• PBS documentary Inheritance
• List of Nazi concentration camps

Further reading

• Voices on Antisemitism Interview with Helen Jonas from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Wiesenthal, Simon (1989). Justice Not Vengeance. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 9780297796831. 
• Graf, Malvina (1989). The Krakow Ghetto and the Plaszow Camp Remembered. University Press of Florida. ISBN 9780813009056.