Holocaust survivors mark Krakow ghetto anniversary

KRAKOW, Poland (Reuters) - Hundreds of Jews on Sunday marked the 65th anniversary of the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto with a march commemorating the German businessman whose efforts had saved Jews from the Holocaust.

Some 700 Jews from Poland, Israel and other countries marched from the site of the former ghetto to what had been a Nazi German labour camp in the suburb of Plaszow, many of whose inmates were employed by Oskar Schindler.


Holocaust survivor Edward Mosberg of the U.S. talks with participants of a march marking the 65th anniversary of the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto, in Krakow, March 16, 2008. (REUTERS/Forum/Piotr Tumidajski)
"Schindler was controversial, perhaps even a bit mad, but he was one of the few Germans who did such a thing," said 86-year-old Jan Dresner of Tel Aviv, one of some 30 marchers saved by the factory-owner.

"This is my first trip to Krakow since then, because I was afraid of those memories, but I felt it was my duty to come with my wife and daughter to tell about it."

Schindler, made famous by the 1993 Steven Spielberg film "Schindler's List", had used his influence with fellow-Nazis as well as bribes and forged documents to save more than one thousand Polish Jews.

After the occupying Germans had liquidated the ghetto in March 1943, gunning down those who resisted, they herded its survivors into the Plaszow labour camp.

"I saw the ghetto being liquidated," said Edward Mosberg of the U.S., now also in his 80s. "I saw hundreds of dead bodies strewn all about -- it was a total cataclysm."

"I have come to bear witness to those days, because the ranks of us survivors are growing extremely thin."

Niusia Horowitz-Karakulska of Krakow was only seven when the ghetto was liquidated, but she and 15 family members owed their survival to the German entrepreneur.

"Schindler was such a warm, magnificent person who had many problems of his own but felt human life must be saved," Hororowitz-Karakulska, 72, told Reuters.

Poland, which was invaded by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia at the start of World War Two in September 1939, lost six million citizens in the war, half of them Jewish.

Up to 1.5 million perished at the notorious Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz, some 40 km (25 miles) west of Krakow.


Copyright © 2008 Reuters


The Jewish ghetto in Kraków (Cracow) was one of the five main ghettos created by the Nazis in the General Government, during their occupation of Poland during World War II. It was a staging point to begin dividing "able workers" from those who would later be deemed worthy of death. Before the war, Kraków was an influential cultural center for the 60,000-80,000 Jews that resided there.
Contents[hide]
1 History
2 Notable persons
3 See also
4 References
5 External links


History:

Persecution of the Jewish population of Kraków began soon after the Nazis occupied the city in September 1, 1939 during the Invasion of Poland. Jews were obliged to take part in forced labor (September 1939). In November 1939, all Jews 12 years or older were required to wear identifying armbands. Throughout Kraków, synagogues were ordered closed and all their relics and valuables turned over to the Nazi authorities.
By May 1940, the German occupation authority announced that Kraków should become the "cleanest" city in the General Government (occupied, but unannexed portions of Poland) and ordered a massive deportation of Jews from the city. Of the more than 68,000 Jews in Kraków when the Germans invaded, only 15,000 workers and their families were permitted to remain in the city. All other Jews were ordered out of the city, to be resettled in surrounding areas.
The Kraków ghetto was formally established on March 3, 1941. Because the ghetto was set up in the Podgórze district, not in the Jewish district of Kazimierz, displaced Polish families from the area took up residence in the former Jewish dwellings away from the ghetto. Before the creation of the ghetto, 3,000 people lived in the Podgórze district. This expanded initially to 15,000 Jews, all crammed into 30 streets, 320 residential buildings, and 3,167 rooms. As a result, one apartment was allocated to every four families, and many less fortunate lived on the street.
The ghetto was surrounded by walls that kept it isolated from the surrounding city. All windows and doors that gave onto the "Aryan" side were ordered bricked up, although four guarded entrances allowed traffic to pass through. In a grim foreshadowing of the near future, these walls contained panels in the shape of tombstones. Small sections of the wall remain today.
Young leftists of the Akiva youth movement, who had undertaken the publication of an underground newsletter, HeHaluc HaLohem ("The Fighting Pioneer"), joined forces with other Zionists to form a local branch of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB, Polish: Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa), and organize resistance in the ghetto, supported by the Polish underground Armia Krajowa. The group carried out a variety of resistance activities including the bombing of the Cyganeria cafe, a gathering place of Nazi officers. Unlike in Warsaw, their efforts did not lead to a general uprising before the ghetto was liquidated.