(…) In May 1940, the Germans began to expel Jews from Krakow to the neighboring countryside. By March 1941, the SS and police had expelled more than 55,000 Jews, including refugees from the German-annexed District Wartheland; about 15,000 Jews remained in Krakow. Moving into the Krakow ghetto The German army occupied Krakow, Poland, in September 1939. In March 1941, the Germans ordered the establishment of a ghetto in Krakow. In this footage, Polish Jews are forced to move into the Krakow ghetto. They wear the required armbands, used to distinguish the Jewish population from the rest of the city’s residents. By late 1941, there were some 18,000 Jews imprisoned in the Krakow ghetto. (…) Operatives of Operation Reinhard, within the framework of which the SS and police planned to murder the Jewish residents of the Generalgouvernement, arrived in Krakow in spring 1942. The Germans claimed to be deporting some 1,500 Krakow Jews to the forced-labor camp in Plaszow; in reality the transport was directed to the Belzec killing center. On June 1 and 6, 1942, the German SS and police deported up to 7,000 Jews via Plaszow, where the camp authorities assisted in the murder of approximately 1,000, to Belzec. On October 28, 1942, the Germans deported nearly half of the remaining Jews in the ghetto, approximately 6,000, to Belzec. During the deportation operations, Plac Zgody and the Optima factory were the major assembly points. During the operation the SS and police shot approximately 600 Jews, half of them children, in the ghetto.
Liquidation of the Krakow Ghetto. The SS and police planned the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto for mid-March 1943, in accordance with the Himmler’s order in October 1942 to complete the murder of the Jews residing in the Generalgouvernement, incarcerating those few whose labor was still required in forced-labor camps. On March 13-14, 1943, the SS and police carried out the operation, shooting some 2,000 Jews in the ghetto. The SS transferred another 2,000 Jews—those capable of work and the surviving members of the Jewish Council and the Jewish police force (Ordnungsdienst)—to the Plaszow forced-labor camp. The rest of the Jews, approximately 3,000, were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center in two transports, arriving on March 13 and March 16. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, the camp authorities selected 549 persons from the two transports (499 men and 50 women) to be registered as prisoners. They murdered the others, approximately 2,450 people, in the gas chambers.
.via ushmm: THE KRAKOW (CRACOW) GHETTO DURING THE HOLOCAUST
By Stanisław Poznański (oprac./edit.), Walka. Śmierć. Pamięć 1939-1945. W dwudziestą rocznicę powstania w warszawskim getcie 1943-1963, Rada Ochrony Pomników Walki i Męczeństwa, Warszawa 1963 (strony nienumerowane/pages unnumbered) – <a rel=”nofollow” class=”external text” href=”http://ushmm.org”>United States Holocaust Memorial Museum</a>, courtesy of Instytut Pamieci Narodowej, Public Domain, Link