Rabka-Zdrój Ghetto

Members of the Boys were imprisoned in a network of ghettos by the Nazis across eastern Europe between 1939-45.

The Boys were teenage and child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after the war for rest and rehabilitation.

The Boys and their families were forced to move from their homes and were held in ghettos in Nazi controlled Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, where they spent years living in dire conditions. The ghettos were not designed for the vast numbers of people forced to find space to live within them. As a result, multiple families shared cramped and insanitary accommodation.

Rabka-Zdrój is a spa town in Lesser Poland Voivodeship located between Kraków and Zakopane in a valley on the northern slopes of the Gorce Mountains. To find out more about the region and the Boys who came from there click here.

Overview

In February 1942, Jews were forced to surrender their furs and ski equipment to the German occupiers. Four people who disobeyed the order were murdered.

On April 1, there were 686 Jews in Rabka, of whom about 370 had moved from Bielsko-Biała and Kraków. At first, the local Jewish residents of Rabka were allowed to stay in their own homes, while the Jewish forced labourers brought to the town were accommodated near the school, in the Słone district.

^{Benek Englard was held in the ghetto}

Transports of forced Jewish workers from Nowy Sącz began to arrive in Rabka in the summer of 1942. From 15 August 1942, a forced labour camp operated in Rabka, located in three villas on today’s Poniatowskiego Street. About 100 Jews were held there working on construction of roads and other facilities. In the summer of 1943, Jewish workers began to be sent to the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp and the labour camp was liquidated.

In the summer of 1942, the Germans shot hundreds of Jews from Rabka and the surrounding area in several massacres.

Deportations

The deportation of Jews from Rabka to the Bełżec extermination camp via Nowy Targ was carried out on 28-31 August 1942. The Nazis announced that if any local non-Jew gave shelter to a Jew, they would be subject to the death penalty. Despite the danger, the Magdalene Sisters of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy took in Jewish children from various parts of Poland.

After the August deportations, the Germans hunted down and murdered Jews in hiding.