A March of Remembrance was held through the streets of Krakow last Sunday to mark the 80th anniversary of the liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto. Participants marched from Ghetto Heroes Square, through the streets of Podgórze, to the former concentration camp KL Plaszow. According to estimates, up to 20,000 people lived in the ghetto at its highest point. 

The route of the march traditionally led from Ghetto Heroes’ Square along Lwowska, Limanowskiego, Wielicka, Jerozolimska and Heltmana streets to the site of the former KL Plaszow camp. The same route was taken by Jews who went from the ghetto to work and to death at the Plaszow camp.

Participants in Sunday’s ceremonies laid flowers at a fragment of the ghetto wall on Lwowska Street. At the site of the former Plaszow camp, at the monument to the murdered, they laid flowers and stones. A service was held at the former camp and survivors’ accounts were read.

As the Israeli ambassador to Poland, Yacov Livne, emphasised during the ceremony, the entire Jewish people were described by the Germans as “subhuman”. 

“But Jews were not, according to Nazi theory, the only sub-humans. The Poles were also them. How could humanity degrade to this level? I will tell you how. Not only because of the murderers who planned it and carried it out, but also because of the indifference of most other people”, the diplomat said. 

“This is the lesson we should learn. No more indifference to crimes. No more indifference to anti-Semitism and xenophobia. We should take this lesson from the Holocaust today. One such lesson is also the need for a secure Jewish state of Israel”, assessed the ambassador at the start of the March of Remembrance.

The Germans established a ghetto in Krakow’s Podgórze district on 3 March 1941, confining almost 17,000 Krakow Jews. The ghetto was one of the five largest in the General Government. In March 1943, after two years of operation, the Germans murdered two thousand Jews on the spot. Survivors of the ghetto included Roman Polanski and Ryszard Horowitz and his sister.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński