The Kraków Ghetto was one of five major metropolitan Nazi ghettos created by Germany in the new General Government territory during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It was established for the purpose of exploitation, terror, and persecution of local Polish Jews. The ghetto was later used as a staging area for separating the "able workers" from those to be deported to extermination camps in Operation Reinhard. The ghetto was liquidated between June 1942 and March 1943, with most of its inhabitants deported to the Belzec extermination camp as well as to Płaszów slave-labor camp, and Auschwitz concentration camp, 60 kilometres (37 mi) rail distance.
Jews forced to shovel snow from the street
Kraków area, late 1939. Captive Jews, assembled for slave labor, sit on an open field surrounded by new barbed wire fence
Construction of the ghetto walls, May 1941
Deportation of Jews from the ghetto, March 1943
Operation Reinhard in Kraków
Operation Reinhard in Kraków, often referred to by its original codename in German as Aktion Krakau, was a major 1942 German Nazi operation against the Jews of Kraków, Poland. It was headed by SS and Police Leader Julian Scherner from the Waffen-SS. The roundup was part of the countrywide Aktion Reinhard, the mass murder of Polish Jews in the so-called General Government under the command of SS und Polizeiführer Odilo Globočnik.
Kraków Ghetto. German checkpoint during the anti-Jewish Operation Aktion Krakau in 1942
Deportation of Jews from the Kraków Ghetto, March 1943. The final ghetto 'liquidation' action
