KL Płaszów

While hundreds of tourists use Kraków as a jumping-off point for visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau, few realise that Kraków actually has a former concentration camp in its own backyard. Deep in Podgórze, a large the tract of land behind Krakus Mound goes undeveloped and largely unvisited, despite being in one of the city’s most desirable commercial and residential areas. This is the former site of ‘Konzentrationslager Plaszow bei Krakau’ - the Nazi German concentration camp in Płaszów, today a wild, uneven expanse of dirt, grass, weeds and stone, which until recently gave little indication of its own existence, let alone the story of its wartime history.

If you think you aren’t familiar with this story, you probably are. It was here that many of the real-life events Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster film Schindler’s List took place. While Schindler’s Factory opened to the public as a museum in 2010, the site of the former Płaszów concentration camp has remained largely in the same state it was left by the Nazis when they abandoned it over 70 years ago. In contrast to Auschwitz there are no professional tour guides here, scant information and little suggestion for how to experience the space.

Somewhere in the neighbourhood of 150,000 prisoners were interred in this 80 hectare prison camp, and the number who perished here is actually impossible to know, but it is certainly in the tens of thousands. Open to the public but a challenge to access, those intrepid enough to make the journey will still find a few war-era buildings, several memorials and some scattered Jewish gravestones. An outdoor exhibit of archival photographs with brief historical information also offers visitors some clues about the camp’s layout. More of a pilgrimage than a destination, Płaszów rewards those who walk its obscure paths with the opportunity to engage the past without any pressure or pretence. This is the most horrific place in Kraków; and the most peaceful. More than we can possibly cover here, to learn about Płaszów’s history, what to see and how to get there, read our exhaustive online feature.