Sepharad Chronicles: Poland. Surviving Fragment of the Krakow Ghetto Wall

Posted by Dr. Jose G. Lepervanche Valencia September 29, 2018

Sepharad Chronicles: Poland. Surviving Fragment of the Krakow Ghetto Wall | Dr. Jose G. Lepervanche Valencia

Surviving fragment of the Krakow Ghetto wall

During our 2016 Global Learning Adventures in Krakow, Poland, were were near the Jewish Quarter. We explored the synagogues and found a surviving fragment of the Krakow Ghetto Wall.

Surviving fragment of the Krakow Ghetto wall

"Between March 1941 and March 1943 a small section of the Podgórze district of Krakow was walled off and served as a holding pen, or ghetto, for about 15,000 Jewish residents of Krakow. Podgórze is a suburb of Krakow lying on the south side of the Vistula River while the main city lies on the north side. Podgórze is not very big and only part of it was walled off. You can walk from one side of the ghetto area to the other in less than five minutes. A dozen small streets that had been home to around 3,000 people suddenly became home to 15,000 people." Ref: https://polandian.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/podgorze-ghetto-krakow-off-the-beaten-track/

Kazimierz Jewish Quarter, Krakow, Poland

Kazimierz was an independent city, a royal city of the Crown of the Polish Kingdom, located south of Kraków Old Town and separated by a branch of the Vistula river. For many centuries, Kazimierz was a place of coexistence and interpenetration of Christian and Jewish cultures, its north-eastern part of the district was historic Jewish, whose Jewish inhabitants were forcibly relocated in 1941 by the German occupying forces into the Krakow ghetto just across the river in Podgórze. Today Kazimierz is one of the major tourist attractions of Krakow and an important center of cultural life of the city. — in Kraków, Poland.