Podgórze ( German: ''Josefstadt'') is a district of

Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

, situated on the right (southern) bank of the

Vistula The Vistula (; ) is the longest river in Poland and the ninth-longest in Europe, at in length. Its drainage basin, extending into three other countries apart from Poland, covers , of which is in Poland. The Vistula rises at Barania Góra i ...

River, at the foot of Lasota Hill. The district was subdivided in 1990 into six new districts, see present-day

districts of Kraków The city of Kraków is divided into 18 administrative districts, each with a degree of autonomy within the municipal government. The Polish name for such a district is ''dzielnica''. The oldest neighborhoods of Kraków were incorporated into the ...

for more details.

History

The oldest man-made structure in Podgórze is the Krakus Mound () on Lasota Hill, believed to be the grave of the legendary prince

Krakus Krakus, Krak or Grakch was a legendary Polish prince, ruler of the Vistulans (a Lechitic tribe), and the presumed founder of Kraków. Krakus is also credited with building Wawel Castle and slaying the Wawel Dragon by feeding it a dead sheep f ...

. It is the largest prehistoric mound in Poland and one of the best view points in the city. The name Podgórze roughly translates as ''the base of a hill''. Initially a small settlement, in the years following the

First Partition of Poland The First Partition of Poland took place in 1772 as the first of three partitions that eventually ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by 1795. The growth of power in the Russian Empire threatened the Kingdom of Prussia an ...

the town's development was promoted by the

Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe#Before World War I, Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military ...

Emperor Joseph II who in 1784 granted it the city status, as the Royal Free City of Podgórze. In the following years it was a self-governing administrative unit. After the Third Partition of Poland in 1795 and the takeover of the entire city by the Empire, Podgórze lost its political role of an independent suburb across the river from the

Old Town In a city or town, the old town is its historic or original core. Although the city is usually larger in its present form, many cities have redesignated this part of the city to commemorate its origins. In some cases, newer developments on t ...

.Adam Marczewski
Podgórze history and its Jewish Community
on '' Virtual Shtetl''. Retrieved 26 April 2012. The Austrian bridge named Carl's Bridge (), linking Podgórze with the Kraków proper across the Vistula was built in 1802. This wooden structure located between today's Mostowa and Brodzińskiego streets, survived only until 1813 when it was destroyed in a flood. The administrative reform of 1810 which followed the expansion of the

Duchy of Warsaw The Duchy of Warsaw (; ; ), also known as the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and Napoleonic Poland, was a First French Empire, French client state established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807, during the Napoleonic Wars. It initially comprised the ethnical ...

brought Podgórze together with the rest of the historic city. However, after the

Congress of Vienna The Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815 was a series of international diplomatic meetings to discuss and agree upon a possible new layout of the European political and constitutional order after the downfall of the French Emperor Napoleon, Napol ...

made Kraków a free city in 1815, Podgórze fell back under the Austrian rule and remained there for the rest of the 19th century. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, in 1910 it was the 13th largest town in the Austrian-ruled Galicia (population 18,142 in 1900). In the years leading to the return of Polish independence, the city council discussions from July 1915 made Podgórze again a part of the Greater Kraków (''Wielki Kraków''); its president, the vice president of a single administrative unit. Towards the end of the Austrian rule, in 1915 the size of Podgórze reached of the size of Kraków. Since the return of Poland's independence, it remained integrated into the city. It includes the historic part of Podgórze with the triangular market square and impressive St. Joseph Church as well as the green hills of Krzemionki with the World War II

quarry A quarry is a type of open-pit mining, open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock (geology), rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some juri ...

called ''Liban'' attached to the infamous Plaszow concentration camp. It also includes the site of the Nazi Kraków Ghetto and a

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. Th ...

of Oskar Schindler who saved nearly 1,200 Jews from the camps, as well as the old villages (now suburbs) of Płaszów, Rybitwy and Przewóz. Jews from Kraków and the nearby villages were ordered to move into the created ghetto, an area of about 20 hectares, until March 20, 1941. Once the so-called 'Special Resettlement Commission' identified 2 square meters of living space for each inhabitant as suitable, about 18,000 people, several families in an apartment, were now cramped into a small area inside Podgorze district. Initially, the area was surrounded with barbed wire under security, and as early as April 1941, a three-meter-high wall was erected around the perimeter, the upper part of which replicated the shape of the Jewish gravestones. The district population as of 31 December, 2006 was 31,599 at an area of 2,456 ha.Cracow City Council official publication

Landmarks

* Krakus Mound – early medieval

tumulus A tumulus (: tumuli) is a mound of Soil, earth and Rock (geology), stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds, mounds, howes, or in Siberia and Central Asia as ''kurgans'', and may be found through ...

* St Benedict's Church on Lasota Hill – originally founded in the early 11th century, rebuilt in the 15th or 16th century * Fort "Benedykt" – built 1853–1856 as a part of Kraków Fortress * Podgórze City Hall – built 1838–1844 and rebuilt in the years 1891–1892 in the Renaissance Revival style * Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help – Redemptorist church and monastery, designed by

Jan Sas Zubrzycki Jan Sas Zubrzycki (25 June 1860 in Tłuste – 4 August 1935 in Lwów) was a Polish architect known for his work in the neo-Gothic styleBolesław Klimaszewski. ''An Outline history of Polish culture''. Interpress. 1984. p. 209. and originator ...

and built between 1902 and 1906 in Romanesque and

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic or neo-Gothic) is an Architectural style, architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half ...

style * St. Joseph's Church – designed by Jan Sas Zubrzycki and built between 1905 and 1909 in the Gothic Revival style * Kraków TV Tower – built 1961–1968 * Cricoteka Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor – built over a former power station in the years 2009–2014 * Eagle Pharmacy – a museum in the only pharmacy located in the Kraków ghetto in Podgórze during the German occupation of Kraków, which served as an underground supply, aid and contact point for Jews living in the ghetto *

Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory () is a former metal item factory in Kraków. It now hosts two museums: the Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków, on the former workshops, and a branch of the Historical Museum of the City of Kraków, situate ...

– former Oskar Schindler's factory, which now hosts two museums: the Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków in the former workshops, and a branch of the Historical Museum of the City of Kraków in the administrative building *

Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp Płaszów () or Kraków-Płaszów was a Nazi concentration camp operated by the SS in Płaszów, a southern suburb of Kraków, in the General Governorate of German-occupied Poland. Most of the prisoners were Polish Jews who were targeted f ...

–

Nazi concentration camp From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps (), including subcamp (SS), subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe. The first camps were established in March 1933 immediately af ...

constructed on the grounds of two former Jewish cemeteries in 1943 and liberated by the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

in 1945 File:Kopiec Kraka-widok z południa-POL, Kraków.jpg, Krakus Mound File:Church of St. Benedict of Nursia, Stawarza street, Podgorze, Krakow, Poland.jpg, St Benedict's Church File:Fort 31 Twierdzy Kraków z lotu ptaka.jpg, Fort "Benedykt" File:Podgorze City Hall (new), Podgorze,Krakow,Poland.JPG, Podgórze City Hall File:Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, 56 Zamoyskiego street, Podgorze, Krakow, Poland ----.jpg, Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help File:Church of Saint Joseph, 1905 design. Jan Sas-Zubrzycki, 2 Zamoyskiego Street, Kraków, Poland.jpg, St. Joseph's Church File:WieżaTelewizyjna-UlicaKrzemionki-POL, Kraków.jpg, Kraków TV Tower File:20200826 Cricoteka w Krakowie 1819 1345.jpg, Cricoteka Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor File:Ghetto Heroes Square IMG 7550.jpg, Eagle pharmacy File:Fabryka Schindlera w Krakowie 2019.jpg,

File:Monument to the Victims of German Fascism (1964 by arch. Witold Cęckiewicz), Kamienskiego street, Kraków, Poland.jpg,

memorial

Notable people

* Edward Dembowski, Polish philosopher, journalist and independence activist, died here * Arthur Dunkelblum, Jewish Belgian chess master, born here *

Salomon Bochner Salomon Bochner (20 August 1899 – 2 May 1982) was a Galizien-born mathematician, known for work in mathematical analysis, probability theory and differential geometry. Life He was born into a Jewish family in Podgórze (near Kraków), th ...

, Jewish American mathematician, born here * Ignacy Friedmann (Freudmann), a Jewish pianist, composer, born here * Józef Hofmann, born here * Aleksander Kotsis, died here * Bernard Offen,

Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

survivor, author, lived here * Poldek Pfefferberg,

Holocaust survivor Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, its collaborators before and during World War II ...

, taught at the Kościuszko Gymnasium as a professor * Oskar Schindler, German businessman credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews in Poland * Albin Francisco Schoepf, born here * Mike Staner, Holocaust survivor, author, born here *

Roman Polanski Raymond Roman Thierry Polański (; born 18 August 1933) is a Polish and French filmmaker and actor. He is the recipient of List of awards and nominations received by Roman Polanski, numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, three Britis ...

, Polish film director, Holocaust survivor, lived here during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

References

External links

Podgórze District Council
official page

from the municipality of Kraków website
Association PODGORZE.PL
site of the association of friends of the district with descriptions of the main sites of interests in several languages. {{DEFAULTSORT:Podgorze Districts of Kraków Historic Jewish communities in Poland Holocaust locations in Poland

History

Landmarks

Notable people

See also

References

External links