The Jewish Schoolteacher of Kazimierz
In the autumn of 1939, the German administration of the General Government strikes at Jewish life in Kraków. In November and December, nearly all Jewish schools are closed and Jewish teachers dismissed. On 5 and 6 December, the Germans seal off Jewish homes in Kazimierz and brutally confiscate their belongings.
A Jewish schoolteacher from Kazimierz, who has taught the neighborhood's children for years, thus loses his post and his livelihood. The education of Jewish children is now forbidden.
He must choose: keep teaching in secret at the risk of his life, try to flee east to the Soviet-occupied zone, or remain idle and hope for better days.
Stripped of his school, what can a Jewish schoolteacher in Kraków do in the winter of 1939?
Deprived of schooling from December 1939 onward, Jewish families and teachers in Kraków organized secret instruction for their children in private apartments. These clandestine lessons continued even after the Podgórze ghetto was established in March 1941. The repression was relentless: the Jewish community of Kraków, numbering roughly 60,000 to 68,000 people, was confined to the ghetto, deported from 1942 onward to Bełżec, and the ghetto was then liquidated in March 1943, with the survivors sent to the Płaszów camp. Very few escaped.
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