The march took place in the southern Polish city on Sunday, state news agency PAP reported.
It went from Kraków’s Square of the Heroes of the Ghetto to the site of the former Plaszow concentration camp.
It mirrored the route followed by Jews as they were escorted from the ghetto to the Plaszow camp, where they would be used as slave labour and eventually killed, the PAP news agency reported.
The participants of the march, who included residents of Kraków, Polish government officials and Israel’s Ambassador to Poland, Yacov Livne, laid flowers at the remains of the ghetto wall.
After reaching the Plaszow site, they also laid flowers and stones at a memorial to those killed in the concentration camp. A religious service was held to commemorate the victims.
'We set off to the concentration camp'
Afterwards, one of the survivors, the head of Kraków’s Jewish religious community, Tadeusz Jakubowicz, recounted his memories of the "liquidation" of the ghetto.
He said: “As I child I was, together with my mother, in the line of Jews being escorted to Zgoda Square [today’s Square of the Heroes of the Ghetto] ... People were trampling on each other. The Jewish community being escorted from the ghetto was very big. And from here, we set off down Wielicka Street to the concentration camp.”
A few months later, Jakubowicz and his parents managed to escape from the Plaszow camp, and survived the remainder of the war hiding in the woods, the PAP news agency reported.
Commemorative events
Remembrance marches to mark the anniversary of the closing of the Kraków ghetto have been held in the city since the 1980s, and are now co-organised by the mayor of Kraków, according to officials.
This year’s 80th anniversary has seen a variety of additional commemorative events, from exhibitions to debates and concerts, reporters were told.
'Liquidation' of Kraków ghetto
Established by the Nazi German occupiers in Kraków’s Podgórze district in 1941, the ghetto housed thousands of Jews from the city and the surrounding region.
In 1942, some 14,000 inhabitants were sent to the Belzec extermination camp and a further 1,000 killed inside the ghetto.
Between March 13 and 14, 1943, the Nazi Germans "liquidated" the ghetto, killing some 2,000 residents immediately. Meanwhile, some 8,000 Jews were escorted to the nearby Plaszow concentration camp and a further 3,000 sent to Auschwitz, the PAP news agency reported.
Survivors from the Kraków ghetto include film director Roman Polanski, writer and painter Roma Ligocka, and photographer Ryszard Horowitz.
Kraków’s Square of the Heroes of the Ghetto now features 70 metal sculptures of chairs, symbolising the abandoned furniture that littered the square during the liquidation of the ghetto, according to the PAP news agency.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, rmf24.pl, gazetakrakowska.pl
