This is a photograph taken in Krakow in 1935 by the photographer Ze'ev Aleksandrowicz, six years before the Nazi invasion of the city. In the photo we can see an Ultra-Orthodox Jew dressed in traditional clothing walking down Gertrudi Street. Further down the street are other people in modern dress. The buildings look well maintained, and the street has the appearance of a wide avenue. There is a sign in Polish on one of the buildings, indicating that it was probably a shop or a business.
This photograph represents life in Krakow before the Nazi invasion. Even then, the Jews suffered some anti-Semitism, but the photograph represents the normal life that existed before the Holocaust. Jews lived and flourished in Krakow from the eleventh century until the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. In 1941 the Krakow ghetto was established, and in 1943 the last Jews were sent to Auschwitz and Belzec for extermination and the ghetto was liquidated.
This photograph is part of the Ze'ev Aleksandrowicz Collection.
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Jewish Community of Krakow – Krakow is the second largest city in Poland. Jews began living in the Krakow area in the eleventh century and established themselves in Kazimierz in the outskirts of Krakow with institutions such as synagogues, a mikveh (ritual bathhouse), and cemetery. The Jewish population continued to grow despite conflicts with their non-Jewish neighbours from time to time, and in the middle of the 1800s, Krakow’s Jews received emancipation and were allowed to settle in the city of Krakow itself. Secular, assimilated Jews became the leaders of the community, although religious Jews also lived in the city. In 1900, there were over 25,000 Jews in Krakow, growing to 60,000 by the onset of World War II. With the German occupation of Krakow in 1939, Jews were ordered to evacuate. Those who were allowed to remain were moved into the ghetto in 1941 and deported to the Belzec death camp in 1942. Oskar Schindler saved over 1,000 Jews in his Krakow factory, as portrayed in the movie, Schindler’s List. After the war, 2,000 Jews returned to Krakow. Today, approximately 1,000 Jews live in Krakow, although only about 200 are affiliated with the Jewish community.
Jewish community of Poland – Jews have been living in Poland for over 1000 years. Polish rulers invited Jews to settle in their lands because they possessed skills that were in demand. Due to the immigration of Jews fleeing persecution in other countries, by the middle of the 1500s, 80 percent of all world Jewry lived in Poland. For the next 200 years, Jews enjoyed a certain amount of autonomy in Poland, although they also faced anti-Semitism, pogroms, and poverty. This was also the time of the development of the Hasidic movement founded by the Ba’al Shem Tov. The end of the nineteenth century saw repressive Czarist Russian rule, which resulted in the emigration of many Polish Jews to countries such as the United States and Israel. Poland nonetheless remained a centre of Jewish learning and Yiddish literature and theatre, and it was the birthplace of many Zionist leaders. At the onset of World War II, over three million Jews lived in Poland; by the end of the war about 85 percent of the community had been murdered by the Nazis. Poland was the location of many of the most notorious concentration camps and of the largest resistance to the Nazis which took place in the Warsaw ghetto. After the Holocaust, most Polish survivors did not want to return to Poland and moved to other countries. Those did wish to return to their homes were often badly received, and there were even cases of violent attacks by their previous neighbours. Fewer than 10,000 Jews currently live in Poland.
Ghetto – The first ghetto was established in Venice in 1516. The name is thought to originate from the “getto” (foundry) that was found near to the site of the Jewish quarter in Venice. Since this time, the word ghetto has been used to describe the segregated part of a town in which the Jews were forced to live and often prevented from leaving. Most Jewish ghettos were very crowded with difficult living conditions. Around many ghettos stood walls that were closed from the inside to protect the community during pogroms, but they also were used to prevent Jews from reaching Christian areas at certain times. Some famous (or infamous) ghettos and Jewish quarters include Josefov in Prague, Le Marais in Paris, Jodenbreestraat in Amsterdam, Kazimierz in Krakow, and Judengasse in Frankfurt. In the nineteenth century, Jewish ghettos were gradually abolished and their walls taken down. In the twentieth century the word ghetto was used to describe the areas in which the Nazis confined Jews during the Second World War. These twentieth-century ghettos were in effect prisons, and due to the horrendous living conditions, many died of starvation and disease. The ghettos were one stage in the Nazi’s Final Solution; from there, the Jews were rounded up and sent to the death camps.
Holocaust – The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide and persecution of European Jewry by the German Nazi regime and its collaborators in Europe and North Africa during World War II. The Holocaust was implemented in stages from Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party’s first rise to power. From 1933 anti-Jewish laws were passed in Germany which excluded the Jews from German society. The Nazis also began to create a network of concentration camps where Jews and other “undesirable elements” of society were imprisoned in inhumane conditions. With the Nazi occupation of Europe during World War II, which started in 1939, the formal persecution of Jews was implemented in all the occupied countries. Jews were sent to ghettos, made to work in forced labour, and lived in appalling conditions. In 1942 the Nazis held the Wannsee Conference where they decided on the Final Solution which detailed the extermination all the Jews of Europe. Initially, more than one million Jews were exterminated by death squads named Einsatzgruppen, who were assisted by local collaborators. As of 1942 Jews were deported from the ghettos to death camps in Poland, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, where millions were murdered in gas chambers on arrival. Jews who were not immediately murdered were sent to force labour, and many died as a result of the harsh conditions, starvation, and disease. Jewish resistance was extremely difficult, but attempts to fight the Nazis were made by Jewish partisans and fighters in uprisings such as, most famously, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Sobibor Uprising. In 1944, as it became clear that the Nazis were losing the war, Nazi camp commanders began to close the camps and forced the survivors to march towards Germany. Already sick and weak from the years of violence, more than 250,000 Jews died on these death marches. The Holocaust came to an end with the defeat of the Nazis in May 1945. Six million Jews, two thirds of the Jewish population of Europe, were murdered with millions more experiencing tremendous suffering, violence, and loss. In addition to the Jews, millions of Roma (gypsies), homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, disabled people, and Soviet and Polish prisoners of war were also murdered during the Holocaust.
Ze’ev Aleksandrowicz – Ze’ev Aleksandrowicz was born to a Jewish family in Krakow in 1905. A photographer, he travelled to Palestine (pre-state Israel) on a few occasions in the 1930s, taking many portraits of people he met. These portraits became a main part of his collection. He also took photographs of scenery, capturing life in urban and rural regions all over the country. He eventually immigrated in 1935. He tried to reflect social diversity in his work which included portraits of Jews, Arabs, Bedouins, famers, intellectuals, members of the Old Yishuv, and new immigrants. His photographs of the newly built towns reflect the economic growth, cultural development, and increase in immigration. Aleksandrowicz also captured events and historic moments such as the opening of the Tiberias hot springs in 1932, the Arlozoroff murder trial in 1934, and a few plays performed at the Habima Theatre in Tel Aviv in 1934–1935.
