Płaszów Concentration Camp

It’s hard to go anywhere in Poland without being reminded of one of the darkest chapters in the history of humanity, and Kraków, for all of its beautiful and intoxicating diversions, really shouldn’t be any different. While thousands of tourists use Kraków as a jumping-off point for visiting Auschwitz, few seem to realise that Kraków actually has a former concentration camp in its own backyard. Across the river, deep in Podgórze, a large the tract of land stands undeveloped and largely unvisited, despite being in one of the city’s most desirable commercial and residential areas – alongside a major thoroughfare (ul. Wielicka), across from a major shopping mall (Bonarka) and a short walk from a major tourist attraction (Krakus Mound), no less. This is the former site of ‘Konzentrationslager Plaszow bei Krakau’ - the Nazi German concentration camp in Płaszów, today a wild, uneven expanse of dirt, grass, weeds and stone, which until recently gave little indication of its own existence, let alone the story of its wartime history.

If you think you aren’t familiar with this story, you probably are. It was here that many of the real-life events Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster film Schindler’s List took place. While Schindler’s factory opened to the public as a museum in 2010 (p.105), the site of the former Płaszów concentration camp has remained largely in the same state it was left by the Nazis when they abandoned it over 70 years ago.

Wartime view of the camp from one of the watchtowers.

Courtesy of IPN Kraków

In the absence of any gallery space or artefacts, Płaszów is not a museum (yet - plans have been made to create one). In contrast to Auschwitz, there are no professional tour guides here, no headsets, no multimedia displays, no instructions or design for how to experience the space (except those in this guidebook). In that sense Płaszów is more of a pilgrimage than a destination, and offers to those who walk its obscure paths the opportunity to engage the past without any pressure or pretence. This is a place where the lives of thousands of people came to an end; a mass cemetery of unmarked graves; the most horrific place in Kraków; and also the most peaceful.

ghetto. Only four kilometres from Kraków’s market square, the site was chosen for its proximity to a handy railroad station, existing labour camp in the nearby Liban quarry (p.109) and its convenient location on top of two Jewish cemeteries – both of which were levelled, with the shattered tombstones used to cobble the lanes of the camp and whole tombstones used as pavers to create the main road. This was standard Nazi practise for humiliating and terrorising their victims.

This is the most horrific place in Kraków; and also the most peaceful.

Ruins of the Jewish funeral parlour (p.9) with the ominous ‘Grey House’ (p.10) in the background.

First established as a forced labour camp in the summer of 1942, Płaszów soon became a favoured execution site for the Nazis as cattle cars full of children, the elderly and infirm were sent from the ghetto only to be systematically murdered and fill mass graves at the camp. Built with the sweat of slave labour, from autumn 1942 all those deemed ‘fit to work’ commuted every day from the ghetto to participate in the construction of their future prison, and from January 1943 many no longer returned to the ghetto, but stayed in the unfinished camp barracks. When Amon Goeth took over as KL Płaszów Camp Commandant he wasted little time, speeding construction of the camp and liquidating the Kraków Ghetto only a month later. On March 13th and 14th, 1943, some 6,000 Jews were permanently transported from the ghetto to Płaszów; 3,000 were sent by cattle car directly to the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and some 1,000-2,000 (accounts vary) others were shot in the street, their bodies later transported to Płaszów and buried in mass graves.

After Goeth’s arrival, Płaszów developed rapidly, becoming a destination for many Jews and political prisoners from southern Poland and beyond. Conditions were abysmal; following the liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto the average barracks contained 150 inmates in a space of about 80 metres, and by the summer of 1943 the number of inmates had ballooned to over 12,000. At its height in 1944 it is estimated that there were 25,000 prisoners interred within the camp, which covered some 81 hectares (200 acres) surrounded by four kilometres of electrified barbed wire, and guarded by twelve watchtowers equipped with machine guns and spotlights.

As the camp expanded, separate living quarters were established for the men and women, Poles and Jews, as well as an administrative sector for the SS officers. The camp also included a large assembly square, hospital, mess hall, isolation cells, stables, bathhouse, bakery and the various workshops where inmates worked extremely long hours without rest or enough food to stave off starvation. In addition to the many on-site workshops, inmates also provided free labour to several local factories, Oskar Schindler’s enamelware factory in Podgórze among them.

Slave labour or not, having such a job (which provided a small amount of security to many Jews who were quite skilled) was certainly preferable to not having one, and immensely better than working in one of the two limestone quarries located at Płaszów, which was essentially a death sentence; the average life expectancy for quarry workers was a mere matter of weeks. Prisoners also faced death from disease (typhus and malaria were rampant in the camp), starvation, and the cruelty of their captors. The Płaszów camp and its staff, led by Amon Goeth - who took pleasure in arbitrarily murdering the inmates, made themselves famous for their sadistic treatment of the camp’s prisoners. Personal accounts from Płaszów portray Goeth as a mass murderer instructing his staff to make sport out of the suffering and execution of the inmates.

From January 1944, Płaszów was officially designated as an independent concentration camp with satellite camps in Wieliczka and Mielec. Jews from smaller camps and ghettos that were being liquidated across Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania were sent to Płaszów, however many of them never made it inside the camp. Covered transport trucks full of Jews arrived several times a week and were taken directly to one of two mass execution sites where the condemned were shot, thrown into a mass grave and covered in dirt and lime, layer upon layer. Plans to install a crematorium at the camp were drawn up but never carried out, with the efficiency of Auschwitz-Birkenau in this regard – to which many transports from Płaszów were sent – likely being a factor. Calculating the number of people who lost their lives at the camp is impossible; a rough estimate of the number of prisoners interred here over its less-than-two-year history would be in the neighbourhood of 150,000, but Nazi records fail to give us anything more than a speculative guess. Liquidation of the camp began in early January 1945, with the last prisoners leaving on death marches to Auschwitz; those who reached it were killed in the gas chambers immediately upon arrival. As the Soviet Army approached Kraków the camp was completely dismantled, and the Germans exhumed the primary mass graves, burned the bodies and spread the ashes all over the site in an effort to hide their crimes. What the Soviets saw upon arrival in 1945 doesn’t differ that much from what see when visiting today - a barren field.

Approximately 2,000 Poles and Jews who passed through Płaszów are known to have survived the war; 1,000 of these were the ‘Schindler Jews’ who escaped from Kraków to Brunnlitz before the war’s end.