Płaszów Camp Site
Trail of War
The site of the German Nazi concentration camp Plaszow, established during the occupation. Today it is a vast, quiet green area, but it is a place of crimes and a burial ground. Please show gravity and respect.
History
The Plaszow forced labour camp was set up in autumn 1942 on the site of two Jewish cemeteries, for the people of the liquidated Kraków ghetto. In July 1943 the Germans set up a "labour education" camp for Poles next to it, and in January 1944 the camp was turned into a concentration camp. Its area was enlarged to 80 hectares and the number of prisoners exceeded 20,000; probably around 40,000 people passed through the camp, mainly from Lesser Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. Mass executions were carried out here, including of prisoners from Kraków's Montelupich prison. The last group of prisoners was sent on foot to Auschwitz-Birkenau on 14 January 1945. Today the site is a place of remembrance: it has an open-air exhibition, "KL Plaszow. Miejsce po, miejsce bez" ("KL Plaszow. A place after, a place without"), and since 2021 a separate KL Plaszow Museum and Memorial has been operating.
Did you know?
Practically all the matzevot and gravestones from the cemeteries on which the camp was built were used to surface roads and as foundations for the barracks. In 2022, in a community initiative, the boundaries of the two pre-war cemeteries were marked out with natural dyes.