Wieliczka | Lesser Poland Voivodeship

"I have lived in Wieliczka since 1914. During the occupation, I did not leave Wieliczka. Because of this, I was a witness to the “expulsion” of the entire Jewish population of the town, which took place in August 1942.

One day in August—I don’t remember the exact date—an order from the administrative authorities of the Kraków District was posted in Wieliczka. It stated that the entire Jewish population had to present themselves one morning on a square called Bogunice. The “square” was actually a large meadow, located 500–600 meters from the Wieliczka train station. The posters stipulated that all Jews who did not appear in Bogunice would be shot. Poles were also warned that they would be killed if they hid Jews or took possession of their property.

I should add that about two weeks before the order to gather, police units had surrounded Wieliczka to prevent any Jews from leaving the town. At that time, there were about 14,000 Jews in Wieliczka. Among them were Jews from the Kraków and Myślenice districts, more specifically from Gdów, Dobczyce, Niepołomice, and Łapanów. The Germans had brought them to Wieliczka some time before and ordered them to live there. They told the Jews that a ghetto would be created in Wieliczka, around Kazimierza Szula Street, which was called Klasinska Street at the time. Jews from Kraków also lived in Wieliczka then, having settled there after the creation of the Kraków ghetto. There were also a few Hungarian Jews in Wieliczka. I want to clarify that the number of Jews reaching 14,000 was told to me by the Jews I used to frequent when I lived and worked in Wieliczka.

On the critical day of the gathering, I went to Bogunice with a few friends. From a distance of a few dozen meters, hidden in weeds, I observed everything that happened in the gathering place. I saw that a large number of Jews had gathered in the meadow at Bogunice with their children. They had bundles with them. The people were standing close to one another and were not allowed to move away. They had to relieve themselves on the spot.

Starting at 7 a.m., the Gestapo, SS, and gendarmes, who were encircling the place, carried out a selection, setting aside the elderly. These people were then loaded into trucks and taken away in an unknown direction. I later learned from members of the Baudienst that these Jews had been driven and shot in the Puszcza Niepołomicka forest. They were the ones in charge of digging and filling the graves for these Jews. My friend Maria Fitkowka, who lived in Staniątki, told me that two days after the execution, these graves were still moving. Some of the Jews were only wounded. They had probably been buried alive.

In the afternoon, the rest of the Jewish population gathered on the square in Bogunice was escorted to the Wieliczka train station and loaded into a train made up of freight cars, the floors of which were covered with a layer of lime. The Jews were crammed tightly into these wagons, standing close to each other, unable to sit down. Around 4 p.m., this train, consisting of about forty wagons, left in the direction of Bieżanów. That’s when I went home. Before leaving, I saw that a large number of Jews were still waiting for their transport in the Bogunice area. I don’t know where the convoy went. I heard that it went to Bełżec. After the war, none of these Wieliczka residents returned to the town.

On the same day, the Germans also liquidated all the sick people, as well as the doctors and nurses who were in the Jewish hospital. The hospital had been set up shortly before by the Jews in the synagogue and the Kahal (Kehillah), on German orders. They were all taken away, but I don’t know to which location. I don’t know what happened to them or how many Jews were in that hospital.

I know that not all Jews obeyed the order on the posters. I was told that nearly 1,800 Jews hid for some time in their homes. For several weeks, I saw with my own eyes that the Germans were catching the Jews who were hiding, and every day they would escort groups of 15 to 30 people to the Jewish cemetery, where they would shoot them.

Only the Hungarian Jews, who had been in Wieliczka for quite a while, were not bothered for about two months. They lived in the Lekarka neighborhood. But then, they were also taken away in an unknown direction.

After the expulsions, the Germans ordered the gathering of all Jewish property—furniture, paintings, and other things—on the school square. The items were transported by cart, then loaded onto a train and taken away in an unknown direction.

Among the Germans who carried out the expulsions and participated in the liquidation of the Jews, I only knew two commanders of the local German gendarmerie: a certain Wagner and Krewer. I didn’t know Richard Wendler and had never heard of him. I don’t know if he participated in the expulsions of the Jews, and if so, to what extent." [City of Wieliczka. Prosecutor Cracow, Wieliczka & Niepołomice, P1010301-P1010304; Deposition of July 29, 1972, by Rudolf Przetaczek, a blacksmith born in 1905, resident of Wieliczka, concerning the gathering, deportation, and shootings of Jews from Wieliczka and surrounding districts]

Wieliczka is a historic town in southern Poland, situated within the Kraków metropolitan area in Lesser Poland Voivodeship.

A small group of Jews likely settled in Wieliczka around the 14th century, shortly after the town was first established. At the time, they constituted only a small and not particularly influential part of the local population. Evidence suggests that this early community was primarily composed of Jewish merchants and craftsmen.

By the 16th century, the Jewish community in Wieliczka had established a formal kehilla (congregation), and by the 17th century, a synagogue had been built.

From the late 19th to the early 20th century, Wieliczka’s Jewish population grew significantly. Not only did the total number of Jewish residents increase, but so did their proportion within the town’s overall population. The community flourished, reaching about 2,000 people by the early 20th century—roughly one-third of the town’s inhabitants.

During the interwar period, the Jewish community played a central role in Wieliczka’s economic and social life. Jews were primarily involved in wholesale trade and industry. They owned a variety of businesses, including beer bottling plants, sawmills, brickworks, a paper products factory, and numerous specialized shops selling furniture, paints, and textiles.

Jews were also an integral part of the local elite. The town had Jewish doctors working for the municipal health fund, a Jewish dentist who served as a city councillor, and a Jewish lawyer who held the position of vice-mayor. The community was active in cultural, religious, and political life, maintaining political parties, sports clubs, synagogues, and cheders (religious schools).

Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, about 1,500 Jews lived in Wieliczka.

The persecution of the Jewish population in Wieliczka began immediately after the German occupation of the town on September 7, 1939. By then, many Jewish men had already fled during the first days of the month. The anti-Jewish measures introduced in the town included public humiliation—such as forcing a group of Jews gathered in the Market Square to collect horse manure—forced labor, and the imposition of monetary contributions. Jewish property was systematically looted.

On September 12, 32 Jewish men were arrested and killed in the nearby village of Pawlikowice. Their bodies were then transported and buried in the Jewish cemetery in Wieliczka, which was located in the area of the present-day village of Siersza (also known as Grabówki).

Beginning in the early summer of 1940, Wieliczka became a refuge for numerous Jews, primarily from nearby Kraków. Many of them were later forced to work on the construction of the road between Wieliczka and Bochnia.

Although Wieliczka never had a formally enclosed ghetto or a designated Jewish quarter, and Jews and Poles lived together throughout the town, by the end of 1941, Wieliczka’s Jewish population was forbidden to leave the town’s limits under penalty of death.

By April 1942, official records listed 4,900 Jews living in Wieliczka, though the actual number was likely higher. In late August 1942, the German occupation authorities ordered the forced relocation of Jews from surrounding communities, including Bieżanów and Dobczyce, to Wieliczka by August 22. This influx dramatically increased the town’s Jewish population, with an estimated 3,000 to 3,500 additional individuals arriving. The mass resettlement marked the beginning of the final phase of the annihilation of Wieliczka’s Jewish community, which the Germans had begun implementing in mid-August 1942.

On August 24, under the pretense of establishing a hospital, Gestapo officer Wilhelm Kunde ordered that the sick and medical personnel be assembled. Just three days later, 113 patients and approximately 40 doctors and nurses were taken to the Niepołomice Forest, to a site known as Kozie Górki, where they were killed.

The major deportation Aktion in Wieliczka was carried out on August 27, 1942, by German forces with the support of Polish auxiliary police. That day, around 8,000 Jews were gathered in the fields of Bogucice. From this assembly, approximately 6,000 individuals were deported to the Bełżec killing center, while about 700 were sent to forced labor camps, including Pustków. Another 700 people—mainly the elderly and infirm—were taken to the Niepołomice Forest and killed. A group of up to 300 Jews was temporarily retained in Wieliczka to handle the remaining Jewish property. At least half of them were later taken to Skawina, where they were killed.

After the ghetto liquidation, the Germans murdered on the grounds of the Jewish cemetery several hundred people who were captured during and after the deportation Aktion. Yahad witnesses recall these killings vividly. According to Stanisława N., born in 1929, the bodies of Jews murdered in the town of Wieliczka were also transported by cart to be buried in mass graves at the Jewish cemetery. These graves had been previously dug by the Jews themselves. Today, a monument at the cemetery commemorates around a thousand victims of the Holocaust who are buried there.

Some Jewish families managed to survive with the help of Poles. After the war, only a handful of Jewish survivors returned to Wieliczka. However, the community was unable to rebuild.

For more information about the killing of Jews in Pawlikowice and Skawina please follow the corresponding profiles.