Montelupich Prison
Trail of War
A former garrison prison of the Austro-Hungarian army, later a civilian prison and today a pre-trial detention centre. The building is still in use, so please view it from outside. During the German occupation political prisoners were held here.
History
At the end of the 19th century the Austrians built a garrison prison here, on the site of fortifications that were being dismantled. During the Second World War it housed a German police prison under the Gestapo. Between 1940 and 1944 around 50,000 people were held here, among them professors of the Jagiellonian University arrested during Sonderaktion Krakau. Mass executions took place within the prison grounds, and some prisoners were murdered in places around Kraków. In reprisal for a failed attempt by Home Army partisans on the life of Governor-General Hans Frank, 100 Poles taken from Montelupich were shot in Podłęże on 2 February 1944. After brutal interrogations, most of those detained were sent to concentration camps: Auschwitz-Birkenau and Płaszów. After 1945 it was a prison of the Security Office, where several thousand Polish soldiers were held, mostly from the Home Army and WiN. Today the building is a remand prison.
Did you know?
The suffering of Poles imprisoned and murdered within these walls is commemorated by the inscription "MONTELUPICH / BRYGIDKI / ZAMEK LUBELSKI / 1939 - 1945" on one of the plaques of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw.