March of Remembrance – VIDEO & Tadeusz Jakubowicz’s survivors testimony

On Sunday 9th March, the “March of Remembrance” (Marsz Pamięci) took place in Krakow commemorating the 82nd anniversary of the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto.

We weren’t able to attend this year’s march, however our video below is from the 2024 march, on the 81st anniversary of the liquidation of the ghetto.

The video is in memory of and dedicated to Tadeusz Jakubowicz a survivor of the ghetto and Płaszów camp, who spoke movingly at the 2024 march, and sadly passed away a few months later in November 2024, aged 85.  Following the war he went on to become active in the Jewish community of Kraków and was a long-time chairman of the Jewish Religious Community.

His personal recollection as a survivor of the ghetto, an escapee and survivor of Plaszów is in my video below, from 02:10, (turn on English subtitles) I’ve included an auto translated transcript at the end of this article.

March of Remembrance
The March of Remembrance was inaugurated in the 1980s by the Jewish Culture Festival Association. It became the official form of commemorating the anniversary of the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto, with hundreds taking part including survivors, and dignitaries from Poland and abroad.

The March retraces the route that the Ghetto inhabitants were forced to take,  passing through the streets of Podgórze.  The participants set off from Plac Bohaterów Getta, stopping at the fragment of the ghetto wall, before continuing to the former KL Plaszów camp, along a route of around 4-kilometres, along which, the Nazis led their victims 82 years ago.

Wreaths, flowers and candles are placed under the plaque commemorating the underground headquarters of the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) at Plac Bohaterów Getta and on the neighboring Lwowska Street under the memorial plaque placed on a fragment of the preserved ghetto wall.

Liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto
On March 3, 1941, in the Podgórze district of Kraków, the Germans established a Jewish ghetto, to which over 20,000 Jewish citizens of Kraków were relocated. By the end of the year, several thousand more Jews from surrounding cities and towns were confined in the ghetto.


During the criminal Operation Reinhardt in 1942, several displacement actions were organised in the ghetto, during which most of the ghetto inhabitants, around 14,000 were deported, mainly to the extermination camp in Bełżec.

The final liquidation of the ghetto began on 13th and 14th March 1943.  Six thousand residents were relocated to the concentration camp in Płaszów, two thousand to Auschwitz-Birkenau, around two thousand people were murdered on the ghetto’s Umschlagplatz – today’s Bohaterów Getta Square.

This was the symbolic end of Jewish life in Kraków, which began to revive only after 1989.  It has been reborn in past years and now the March does not only commemorate the tragic wartime fate of the Jewish community but also in a very clear way shows victory of life over death.

Płaszów Camp
KL Płaszów was a Nazi concentration camp operated by the SS in Płaszów, a southern suburb of Kraków, within the General Governorate of German-occupied Poland.

Most of the prisoners were Polish Jews who were targeted for destruction by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. Many prisoners died because of executions, forced labor, and the poor conditions in the camp. The camp was evacuated in January 1945, before the Red Army’s liberation of the area on 20th January 1945.

Unlike Auschwitz, most of the camp was destroyed. The area of the camp is now the KL Płąszów Museum, with information boards, paths etc.  A new visitors centre is under construction.

Read more:
  Kraków Ghetto
  Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp
  David Kurzmann memorial
  German policeman who saved jews in Kraków Ghetto
   ŻÓB Jewish Combat Organization
  Ghetto – memory trail 1941 – 1943

Transcript of survivors testimony in a speech given by Tadeusz Jakubowicz at the March of Remembrance in March 2024, commemorating the 81st Anniversary of the liquidation of the ghetto. – you can watch his speech in the video above.

Excellency, Mr. President, Mr. Chairman of the Council,

Excellency I should start with Excellency but it is not important today. Ladies and Gentlemen, how time inexorably…. Goes forward, I see it from myself, when 81 years ago, after the liquidation of the ghetto walked here with my mother I as a child.

We walked here, then the road led to the camp, walking down Limanowskiego Street I saw a man lying there, but I completely didn’t realize at the time what it was. It only became clear when I was already about fourteen fifteen years old, where my mother told me, I didn’t want to tell you about it then, but it was a man who wanted to choose freedom.

And unfortunately, the gendarmes’ bullet got him just on Limanowska

We went to the camp.- Walking I reached only here, where the ghetto ends to the school. Already my legs began to ache. Mom took me in her arms In one she held a suitcase, a coat that was with us until the end and with us walked such a Fela Pleszowska

A wonderful character, a great friend of mom. In the camp we were relatively short Until Governor Frank’s district came out about the liquidation of children.

My father, as a lieutenant in the Highland Brigade, got drafted to report to the army and my mother and I went to the camp.

When the district came out when between Barwald and Wadowice there was a skirmish between these Podhale men whose father was with the German army stayed Germans Convinced them. At that time my father went into his house in Wadowice with ctia uniform, changed, what was still left. He came to Krakow, reported to the Andrzych factory

He wanted to be as close to us as possible. As the district came out the parents made a decision. We had to run away. And so we did.

Dad had no problems getting out of the Madrich And mom, on the other hand, had no problems getting out of the ghetto. The appearance of my mother, a typical Aryan woman, a beautiful woman Each of us has parents beautiful and most beautiful.

She only took off her armband with the David mag No one hooked her that she might be Jewish. With me there were problems to deport me.

This was done by a gentleman who was removing pollution from the camp. He hid me under a pile of cardboard boxes, throwing various garbage, waste.

He drove me to the Horn, there my parents were already waiting, and from there we decided to move in an unknown direction in the evening. In any case, we took our first steps to the town where my mother was born, that is Dobczyce. 

Because she felt that there, among these residents, someone would extend a hand to us. This is what happened.

We went to Dobczyce. The first person who gave us shelter was a gentleman named Rybka. He sheltered us for 10 days in a barn, until one day he came and said listen, you have to leave my house because I am afraid of both the Germans and my neighbors.

We started to wander
From Dobczyce we walked to Czaslaw, where there was an employee there, because his grandfather who ran a tannery in Dobczyce, we went to him, he welcomed us very warmly, took us in We were there for a few days. But in order not to endanger his family, we knew that we should look for some place on earth where we could survive.

Everywhere with us walked a gentleman named Kopera, who came to my grandfather to …. He took my mother’s mother because it was as if he sensed something much earlier that his fate was sealed and that of our entire family. 

From Mr. … In which we lived, literally we were a week of time. We then went to Wi?niowa, from Wi?niowa to Wierzba Nowa. We were chugging along, and at one point Dad said to Mr. Pogorz, please help me find a place where we could be safely housed And then Mr. Kupera took us to the village of Korlatka.

He introduced us to wonderful people named Krup. They told him what was going on. They made a decision very quickly. In the forest only piles In cavities where you can, I could then only move around these cavities. The rest had to spend their lives lying down.

I remember those winters of 1943-1944. when the temperature reached thirty degrees. Mr. and Mrs. Krupa would come to us in the woods and invite us to their house. I was then the happiest person when I could get into the stable and officiate together with the animals Rabbits, calves shimmered. Something Wonderful.

Ladies and Gentlemen, as today, after so many years, never, the blackest scenario I did not predict. What is happening across our eastern border. I see my peers Hiding in bunkers, in garages, hugging teddy bears, doggies. I have not experienced this.

My only entertainment, where my parents kept me, It was like in the doorway of our dugout, I would put the branches aside a little and I could watch my peers kicking a ball, playing, chewing on them. Unfortunately, I couldn’t.

The year 1944, the liberation, and imagine the first person who gave us freedom there in Kornatka, it was a Jewish Russian officer who entered the room where we were sitting, my father was of very tall stature, a piece of a man, he was sitting on such a chariot, my father looked at him like this and started talking to himself in Yiddish.

The officer stopped like this and asks him, you Yevrei? Father this, this Yevrei understood, nodded to him, then answered, I toja. That’s why I remember those moments, I remember those people who helped us, risking their lives, help us Survive

But it worked out that after the war immediately after the war, the parents applied to Jadwasz, so that all those who were wonderful people, risked their lives, risked their families Able to us, to extend a hand to their brothers were awarded the medals of the Righteous Nations, Jadwasz. Thank you for your Attention.

I’m sorry it took a while, but this is a bit of my life story. Thank you.

Spoken Testimony of Tadeusz Jakubowicz at the March of Remembrance in March 2024, who died a few months later in November 2024.

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