The ghetto at
Kraków,
Poland's third largest city, was sealed off by a wall and
barbed wire fence on March 20, 1941. In a total area of just
600 by 400 meters, some 18,000 Jews were forced to live in
revolting sanitary conditions. Deportations to Belzec and
Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camps began at the end of
May 1942. By March 1943 no remnant remained.
A forced labor
camp at Kamionka, adjacent to Bendzin (Bendsburg), became a
Jewish ghetto as Nazi policy turned toward extermination.
Liquidation of the Kamionka ghetto began on August 1, 1943.
Armed resistance held off the Nazis for two weeks, but
eventually all survivors of the uprising were transported to
the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
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The
Kraków Jewish
Council applied the "Aufgeliefert durch den Judenrat" (sent
from the Jewish Council) cachet on the August 15, 1942,
postal card to Alfred Schwarcbaum at Lausanne, Switzerland.
The April 25, 1942, postal card from the Kamionka Jewish
Council to Bratislava, Slovakia, has an undated boxed
postmark of the Kamionka village post office and a
double-circular cancel of Lublin; it was censored at Vienna. |