Maków Podhalański(Makow) | Lesser Poland Voivodeship

« Gestapo men brought a group of Jews. They were locked up for two days in a parish house located at 58 Rynek street.  They did not get any food or water. There were at least 20 people.

Two days later they were transferred to the “Marysin” villa.  I was ordered to dig a pit there. I did this task with Stanislaw Talaga. I could not describe the Gestapo soldiers who ordered me to do this. We dug a pit of 4x5x2 m behind the villa. We were ordered then to hide ourselves. Both of us hid in the bushes where we watched the executions of Jews.

I saw five Gestapo men. I am not able to describe their appearance. First, they brought mothers and children from the villa’s cellar. They took the children and threw them in the pit. The mothers screamed. They ordered them to get rid of their clothes. One they were naked, then shot them dead.” [Jan Polak, born in 1905, testifying on 21th March 1974, Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich in Krakow]

Maków Podhalański is a town located 50km southwest of Krakow. The first mention of the Jewish community dates back to the first half of the 19^th century. The majority of them owned taverns and lived off rent. Supposedly, many Jews had passed by the town even before as there were a lot of horse fairs. In 1890, about 100 Jews lived in Makow. At the end of the 19^th century, there were 45 Jewish families. By that time a wooden synagogue had been built. However, there was no Jewish cemetery – all the Jews were buried in the nearest town of Jordanów. Jews from Makow were not exceptionally rich. In 1916, their situation got worse because of a fire that burned down several houses in the center, where the Jews lived. In 1920, 200 Jews lived in the town comprising 5% of the total population. Most of them lived off trade of wood, fabric, and iron materials. Some owned restaurants or bakeries, according to the witness interviewed by Yahad-In Unum. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, the Jewish community numbered about 300 Jews. The town was occupied by Germans in September 1939.

 Immediately after the occupation, the Nazis started to persecute the Jews. They were not allowed to circulate freely in the town; however, there was no ghetto. Between 1940 and 1941, there was a labor camp, where all the Jews from the town and surrounding areas were confined. The inmates were subjected to forced labor, for instance: cutting  wood, digging a canal, and the road construction from Sucha to Jordanow.  In March 1941, the Nazis took Gmina’s estate and ordered the destruction of the synagogue. A Judenrat was created. Between 1940 and 1942, the Gestapo unit stationed in Willa Marysin where a prison had been created. Many of the Jews were imprisoned there prior to being shot. In the course of these years, systematically, the Jewish inmates were taken from the prison in groups of fives or sevens to the pits. They had to dig the pit in the garden close to the prison, and then they were shot to death. During one of such executions, fifteen young girls from Rabka, who, according to the witness interviewed by Yahad, served as “comfort girls”, were shot in one of the pits. Before being shot, they were forced to undress.

About 150 Jews killed at Willa Marysin were buried in the Catholic cemetery of the town by a local gravedigger or requisitioned local people. On August 28, 1942, the final extermination of the local Jews took place. On this day, all the remaining Jews were rounded-up and taken to the railway station to be deported to the death camps, Auschwitz or Bełżec. According to the testimony of a local resident, those who couldn’t walk or were too ill were killed on the spot in their houses. All the Jewish belongings were taken by Germans or sold at an auction to the local people. In 1964, two of the three mass graves located at the Willa Marysin were exhumed and the corpses were reburied in Wadowice. There is no memorial for Jews in Makow.