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By March 1941, 15,000 of the 70,000 Jewish residents remained in the city.
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On this day, March 13, 1943, the Krakow ghetto was liquidated by Julian Schnier, the commander of the SS and the Police in the Krakow district of Poland.
Upon invading in 1939, the Nazis made Krakow the center of their government and enacted laws to diminish the livelihood of the 70,000 Jewish residents. Donning white armbands with a yellow star, Jews of Krakow were forced to register their property with the Nazi authorities and perform forced labor.
By March 1941, 15,000 Jews remained in the city; the rest had been deported to the countryside. Later that month, the ghetto was formally established in Krakow. Due to appalling conditions inside the ghetto, death from starvation and illness was rampant. Jews in the ghetto were put to work in a factory run by Nazi authorities.
On May 30, 1942, the deportation of some 4,000 Jews to Belzec and the destruction of the Warsaw Great Synagogue marked the beginning of "Operation Krakow". Six thousand of the surviving Jews in Krakow were taken to Belzec on October 28, 1942, while 600 additional Jews—including about 300 children—were murdered and executed.
Over the course of the two-day liquidation, about 2,000 Jews were shot and executed, another 2,000 were sent to the forced labor camp in Plaszow, and 3,000 were sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Out of the 3,000 deportees, 549 were registered as inmates in the camp, and 2,450 were immediately gassed to death. Approximately 4,200 Jews came home after the war.
