March 13, 1943

Kraków Ghetto

Final liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto begins

Parents ordered to Płaszów were told they could not bring children younger than 14 — and falsely promised the children would follow.

13 March 1943, 6 a.m.: Ghetto A surrounded

At 6 a.m. on 13 March 1943, SS, German police and Sonderdienst units under SS-Sturmbannführer Wilhelm von Haase surrounded section A of the Kraków Ghetto.

The inhabitants were given little time to collect essential possessions. Those selected for labour were marched under guard to the Płaszów forced-labour camp, whose commandant Amon Göth took part in the operation.

Parents sent to Płaszów were generally forbidden to bring children younger than 14; the Germans falsely promised the children would follow once a special barracks was prepared.

The second day

Some inhabitants hid in cellars and attics or tried to escape to the non-ghetto side of Kraków. A few parents smuggled children into Płaszów concealed among their belongings or by bribing guards.

On 14 March the Germans liquidated section B, murdered patients and children from the hospitals and orphanage, and deported other Jews toward Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The numbers do not agree

Institutional estimates conflict sharply over how many were transferred to Płaszów: IPN, the Płaszów Museum and a USHMM timeline give about 8,000, while Yad Vashem and another USHMM article give about 2,000.

USHMM estimates approximately 2,000 Jews murdered in the ghetto itself; IPN gives a range of 700 to 2,500. Roughly 3,000 people were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, of whom 549 were selected for forced labour and about 2,450 murdered in gas chambers.

Afterwards the pharmacist Tadeusz Pankiewicz, who ran the Eagle Pharmacy inside the ghetto, walked streets that had been crowded two days earlier and found them empty except for corpses, blood, and people signalling from hiding places.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources 2 audit passes

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What the sources leave uncertain

March 13 is securely established as the start date, but the liquidation was not a one-day event. Polish and Yad Vashem sources usually give March 13–14; the USHMM timeline uses March 13–16 because it includes the associated transports and selections.
Institutional estimates conflict sharply over the number transferred to Płaszów: IPN, the Płaszów Museum, and a USHMM timeline give about 8,000, while Yad Vashem and another USHMM article give about 2,000. Both estimates are preserved here rather than silently reconciled.
Estimates of those murdered during the operation range from roughly 700 to 2,500, depending on the source and the geographical or chronological boundaries used.