Plaszow Concentration Camp in Krakow Then & Now
This is a complete, location-by-location tour of the Plaszow (Płaszów) concentration camp as it looks today, based on the author’s visit and updated for 2026. The camp — officially KL Plaszow (Konzentrationslager Plaszow) or Arbeitslager Plaszow in German wartime documents — operated from 1942 to January 1945 on the site of two former Jewish cemeteries in the Podgórze district of Kraków, Poland.
A note on spelling: Plaszow is the standard English transliteration used throughout this article; Płaszów is the Polish spelling with diacritics; in German sources, the site appears as Konzentrationslager Plaszow or simply KL Plaszow; in Dutch as kamp Plaszow or concentratiekamp Plaszow; in French as camp de Plaszow. The commandant’s residence is searched as Amon Goeth’s house, Amon Goeth’s villa, in Polish as willa Amona Goetha, and in Spanish/Italian as casa Amon Goeth — all referring to the same building, covered in detail in the final section of this article.
2026 update on the KL Plaszow Museum: Since this article was first published, the site has changed. On 15 March 2024, an outdoor exhibition titled «KL Plaszow: A Place After, A Place Without» opened, with bilingual (Polish/English) information panels and marked walking routes across the former camp. The historic Grey House is currently under renovation and will eventually house a permanent exhibition. A new Memorial building is under construction nearby at 26 Henryka Kamieńskiego Street, connected to the camp area by an underground pedestrian tunnel; as of the most recent estimates (2026), its completion is now projected for no earlier than late 2027. Despite these ongoing works, the former campgrounds themselves remain entirely free and open to the public 24 hours a day, 365 days a year — there is no ticket office, no entrance fee, and no fixed closing time. This guide reflects both the historical layout and the current (2026) state of the site.
PLASZOW (PŁASZÓW) CONCENTRATION CAMP LOCATION: HOW TO GET THERE FROM KRAKOW CITY CENTRE
Plaszów camp today (generally well-known due to the “Schindler’s List” movie) can be described as a memorial park with some pre-war buildings and remnants of the camp facilities. The site is 5 km from the Old Town of Krakow and is accessible by public transport.
Getting there: Tram lines 3 and 24 from central Krakow to the «Cmentarz Podgórski» (Podgórski Cemetery) stop, ≈20 minutes, every 10–15 minutes. From the stop, walk ≈300 metres along Jerozolimska Street to the former main gate. Alternatively, the site is roughly a 40–50 minute walk from Schindler’s Factory Museum, making it possible to combine both in a single day.
Access: The former campgrounds are open 24 hours a day, every day of the year. There is no fence, no gate, no ticket office, and no admission fee.
Best time to visit: Daylight hours are strongly recommended — the site has no lighting, uneven terrain, and several of the most significant locations (execution sites, ruins) are easier to find and more atmospheric in good light.
Facilities: There are no toilets, cafés, or visitor centre on site (as of 2026) — nearest facilities are in the surrounding residential streets. Wear sturdy footwear; paths are unpaved and hilly in places.
Guided tours: Several Krakow-based operators run guided walking tours of Plaszow; given the site’s minimal on-site signage outside the 2024 information panels, a guide or this article is strongly recommended for first-time visitors.
PLASZOW CONCENTRATION CAMP MAP: ALL 15 SITES FROM MAIN GATE TO AMON GOETH’S VILLA, COMBINED WITH MODERN GOOGLE MAPS
Once you get to the Cemetery Podgorski stop, you should adventure another 300 meters to the starting point of the “Jerozolimska” street. The street has retained its pre-war title and leads us to the place where the Plaszów main gate once stood. “Jerozolimska” is the very street, which was lined with the demolished Jewish gravestones by the Germans and has become a part of history as the “SS Strasse”. The former territory of KL Plaszów today is on the right-hand side. The modern accommodation buildings on the left side of the road mark the site where the SS barracks once stood. I’ve made a combination of the Plaszów concentration camp map with the modern Google Maps variant to reveal the sites of the Plaszów location.
- Sorting facilities
- Plaszów Main Gate
- SS officer’s club
- SS headquarters (Kommandantur)
- SS barracks
- Old / Grey House
- Funeral parlor ruins
- The Old Cemetery of the Jewish Commune in Podgórze
- Plaszów Roll-call area / Appellplatz
- “C Dolek” execution site
- “Hujeva Horka” execution site
- Liban Granite Quarry
- The Monument to the Victims of the Crime of 10 September 1939
- Gravestone of Sarah Schenirer
- Plaszów Commandant’s Villa / Amon Goeth Villa
PLASZOW MAIN GATE AND SORTING FACILITIES: JEROZOLIMSKA STREET (FORMER «SS-STRASSE»)
The former sorting facilities were located just outside the Plaszow concentration camp territory, next to the main gate. During the winter of 1943-1944, camp inmates had to construct an additional railway line, a branch passage from the Krakow Plaszow train station, which transported future prisoners straight to the entrance of the camp. The former railway tracks have not survived till now. This short line was constructed between the “Jerozolimska” street and the “sorting” facilities. Prisoners had to give all their belongings brought by train, valuables, and even their outerwear. Ruins of the former watch-house and lengthy warehouse remain a memory of the facilities, which had collected personal belongings from the inmates, and made a sorting and further transportation through the General-Government.
Next to the unloading Plaszow train station and warehouses, opposite the SS Officers’ Club and further, along the “Jerozolimska” street, the Main Gate to the Plaszow concentration camp was located. Thousands of prisoners had made their last journey to the labor camp through this entrance, which was guarded with German precision.
SS OFFICERS’ CLUB, HEADQUARTERS (KOMMANDANTUR) AND BARRACKS (WACHKASERNE): WHERE AMON GOETH FIRST LIVED
Two adjacent buildings at Jerozolimska 8 and 10 are the Polish pre-war buildings, preserved, along with the Gray House and the villa of Commandant Göth, further down the street. During the war, the buildings were located inside the perimeter of the Plaszow camp, beyond the Main Gate on the left side. Months before moving to the Red House (Commandant’s villa), Amon Leopold Goth had lived here. Then, the Germans located the main post of the camp guard here, with a telephone switchboard and radio, where the SS guards could listen to news from the front lines through the German Ministry of Propaganda, one led by Joseph Goebbels. The two buildings were used as an officer’s club for guards, where they, among other places, had spent their ”free time”. Today, another building was added to the right of the pre-war one, the third floor, and another building on the right, which was not there at the time of Plaszow.
SS barracks for the guards had once stood further along the Jerozolimska street (the Germans had renamed it Hauptstrasse), opposite the infamous Grey House. Modern accommodation facilities stand here today. The Former SS barracks were constructed as a rectangular building 105 by 55 meters, which was called Wachkaserne, built in the summer of 1943. Architect Diana Reiter was killed for the suspension of the construction of this very building in August 1943, and not in March, and not for the prisoners’ barracks as was depicted in “Schindler’s List” movie. The Germans had constructed a high watchtower on its eastern side, distant from the Main Gate, which once allowed them to control the entrance to the camp and most of its territory. Wachkaserne had its inner courtyard and four barracks for the Ukrainian guards, separated from the German part of the building.
On the opposite side of the road, just in from the SS Officer’s club, the U-shaped SS Headquarters (Kommandatur) was located. Germans used to manage the everyday formations within their courtyard. In this respect, on their everyday way from and into the Plaszow labor camp, prisoners were required to watch the daily routine of their torturers. During the expansion of the building, part of its lateral wings was dismantled, but the work was not completed until the liquidation of the camp in 1945. In 1944, the Germans had initiated the construction of the new, much bigger (60*50 meters) Headquarters (Kommandatur) next to the pre-war Wielicka Street, but it was never built. The SS hospital for the guards once stood on the hill next to the Headquarters.
THE GREY HOUSE (OLD HOUSE) AT PLASZOW: FUTURE KL PLASZOW MUSEUM BUILDING, STEHBUNKER CELLS AND ALBERT HUJAR
The pre-war building, built in the 1920s, years before the occupation, was used as the administration of the New Jewish cemetery, just behind it at that time. Adolf Siódmak, the architect, was deported from Kraków by the Nazis in 1940 and died in the Gross-Rosen concentration camp at the end of the Second World War. With the arrival of the Germans and the initiation of the Plaszow concentration camp, the building of the Grey House Plaszow retained its administrative use, now for the SS. The building turned out to be located within the administrative heart of the camp, at the intersection of Hauptstrasse, Bergstrasse, and ”SS-Strasse” streets, renamed in such a manner by the Germans.
Here was the office of Amon Goeth, the camp commandant. According to the testimonies of the survivors, he used to fire from one of the windows to hit the prisoners of the camp, which is often attributed to the Commandant’s villa further down the street. High SS officers, such as Hujar, Zdrojewski, Landsdorfer, Ekert, and Glaser, lived here during the occupation. In August 1943, the Germans equipped a prison in the basement of the building with solitary cells, which became known as the “standing bunkers” (Stehbunker). Their width was so small that the prisoner had to stand since he could not sit on the floor. Prisoners were also tortured here, and the iron grids on the basement windows, preserved from those times, did not leave a chance to escape. Speaking about Plaszow today, the Grey House is accommodated by the locals. Still, for some years, there has been a discussion on making the building a part of the Plaszow memorial complex and opening it to the public, reconstructing the premises as a museum.
The Grey House (Szary Dom), which housed the camp administration and a notorious SS prison in its basement, is also experiencing a major transition. For decades after World War II, the building was utilized as a social and private apartment block. However, it has now been officially incorporated into the KL Plaszow Museum. Following extensive renovation works in 2022 to secure the building’s roof and foundations, the museum is adapting the space for a permanent exhibition. The ground floor will feature witness accounts to convey the personal history of the camp, while the basement cells—including standing cells where prisoners awaited execution—will be preserved as a space for solemn contemplation.
FUNERAL PARLOR RUINS AT PLASZOW: THE DESTROYED JEWISH CEMETERY BUILDING TURNED HORSE STABLE BY AMON GOETH
Just next to the former SS headquarters (Kommandatur), we can still manage a pathway that had once separated two Jewish cemeteries. The New Jewish Cemetery, whose administration was located in the Grey House, and the Old Jewish Cemetery Podgórze, from which tombstones will later be taken to lay out the so-called “SS road”. In 1920, the local Jewish community began the construction of a magnificent funeral parlor for the needs of the Old Jewish Cemetery. The building was completed in 1932 and was a majestic example of the Byzantine style. The funeral parlor had three domes, with the central one 25 meters high. It was equipped with a morgue, embalming rooms, a little room and prayer closet, and a room for ceremonies.
With the arrival of the Germans, Amon Goeth, the commandant of the Plaszow forced labor camp, ordered the setting up of a horse stable and a night house for pigs and cows within the Funeral parlor. All valuables and decorative elements, at the same time, were looted. In the spring of 1944, Amon Goeth initiated a kind of sarcastic performance for the local occupying authorities and the officers among the SS guards. The massive structure was blown up in several stages. At the same time, the Germans intended to preserve the western wing to locate a pumping station in the future, and, in this form, the building met the end of the war and was completely destroyed in subsequent years. Walking across the Plaszow camp Today, massive concrete blocks are the only remains of a pre-war building 25 meters high.
THE OLD JEWISH CEMETERY OF PODGÓRZE (1887): TOMBSTONES USED TO PAVE THE «SS-STRASSE»
Before the war, two Jewish cemeteries were located on the site of the future Plaszow concentration camp. The older one was founded back in 1887 and received the name Podgorze from the town, which was located here and was not part of Krakow at that time. A New Jewish Cemetery appeared nearby only in 1932, when this territory had become a part of Krakow. With the arrival of the Germans, an order was given to destroy the Old Cemetery, and tombstones from Jewish graves were used as material for lining the main roads within the camp. Of all the gravestones, only one has been preserved, with the name of Chaim Jakub Abrahamer, buried here back in 1932. Since the barracks were built over the cemetery during the time of Plaszow, their modern appearance is a result of recent archaeological excavations, as we see Plaszow today on tour.
PLASZOW ROLL-CALL AREA (APELLPLATZ): 3,000 GHETTO LIQUIDATION VICTIMS BURIED HERE IN 1943
In March 1943, on the eve of the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto, the Germans used steam excavators to dig two large pits right in the middle of the future Plaszow labor camp. The bodies of victims who were killed during the liquidation of the ghetto, mainly women, old people, and children from ghetto B (who were defined as ”unfit for work”), were dumped into these pits. Later, the Germans continued to execute the weak ones. Jews were brought to the edge of one of the pits and shot in the back of the head. Towards the summer of 1943, when the Germans had chosen ”Hujowa Górka” as the preferred place for mass executions, these initial pits were covered with earth, and the site was leveled. The number of these first victims of mass killings, buried in two pits, is estimated at 3000 bodies. Thus, the sadly remembered Apellplatz was created. Similar to the other camps such as Dachau, Buchenwald, and Mauthausen, A platform for roll-calls, selection, and medical examination of the Praszow prisoners. An area of about 100*100 meters became an important site of the camp. Recent archaeological excavations at Apellplatz have revealed the exact location of the two pits and the remains of the bodies of the victims of mass killings performed in the spring and summer of 1943.
«C DOLEK» MASS EXECUTION SITE: 8,000 VICTIMS AND THE 1964 MONUMENT AGAINST FASCISM
At the end of the 18th century, when this part of Poland was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Austrians built some fortifications as part of the fortification system of the city of Podgozge and Krakow. At this very place, the Szaniec FS-22 fortification was erected in 1855-1856. During 1943-1944, the hill had become a site of mass executions of prisoners who were designated as incapable of work, rule-breakers, or simply chosen by the guards. In addition to the prisoners of the Plaszow, prisoners from two Kraków prisons of the occupation period were also shot here.
After the executions, the Jews were ordered to collect the bodies and burn them on an open fire, taking wood from the neighboring woodworking workshops. Some bodies were initially buried within a hexagonal pit. The exact number of victims who were shot at the site and on the ”Hujowa Górka” cannot be determined precisely, and historians generally agree on the figure of 8000 victims. In the summer of 1944, when it had become clear that the Red Army would occupy nazi Krakow before the end of the year, the SS initiated the concealment of traces of crimes. Both here and within the ”Hujowa Górka”, prisoners from Sonderkommando dug up bodies and burned them in open furnaces. The first works on the exhumation of the remains were carried out immediately after the war in 1946.
After the war, several memorials were erected on the ”C Dolek” hill. The most famous architectural composition, established in 1964, is called ‘Pomnik Ofiar Faszyzmu’ (“Monument against Fascism”). A huge inscription in Polish on the back of the monument states: ‘W hołdzie męczennikom pomordowanym przez hitlerowskich ludobójców w latach 1943–1945’ (‘In memory of the martyrs killed during the German genocide of 1943–1945’). In addition to a large-scale monument, another three memorials have been erected at the ”C Dolek” mass execution site. One of them, a large stone obelisk, was erected by the Jewish community of Krakow to perpetuate the memory of all the Jewish victims of Plaszow. The second one, a stone slab, installed in 2000, pays tribute to the women from Hungary who arrived in Plaszow before being sent to find death in the Auschwitz death camp. The newest monument was installed in 2012 and honors the memory of the soldiers of the Polish army and resistance, who were also killed in the Plaszow camp (Arbeitslager Plaszow) during the German occupation.
«HUJOWA GÓRKA» (CHUJOWA GORKA) EXECUTION SITE: ALBERT HUJAR, AMON GOETH AND THE MAIN PLASZOW KILLING GROUND 1943–1944
The infamous place of execution within the Plaszow concentration camp (Konzentrationslager Plaszow) had received its name ”Hujowa Górka” or ”Hujarowa Górka” or “Chujowa Górka” (sometimes ”Kozia Górka”) due to camp slang. It combines an offensive word in Polish and the name of Albert Hujar, the cruelest camp warden among the SS. Hujar was the one who offered the place for the mass execution of Jews who arrived from the town of Bochnia (east of Krakow) in the summer of 1943. Before the war, an Austrian fortification of the 19th century, dismantled in the 1930s, was located on a hill. After that, a large hexagonal pit remained here, with a circumference of up to 50 meters and a depth of up to 5 meters.
Starting from September 1943, ”Chujowa Gorka” became the main place of mass executions of prisoners in Plaszow and was used, under the personal supervision of Albert Hujar and Amon Goeth, until mid-February 1944. The practice of burning bodies on an open fire was tested here for the first time in December 1943. By February 1944, after the most intense period of executions, the pit was already filled with bodies, and the Germans shifted the focus of the massacres to a nearby hill, which became known as ”C Dolek”. The mass grave site on the ”Hujowa Górka” was leveled, and the barracks were built. In the summer of 1944, an order was received to destroy the traces of the massacres on ”Chujowa Gorka” and on ”C Dolek” hill. Immediately after the war, a large wooden cross with barbed wire was erected at the site of the former massacre site, and we can still observe it at Plaszow concentration camp today.
Albert Hujar, the SS-Oberscharführer after whom the execution site is informally named, was among the most feared guards at Plaszow. Survivor testimony describes him as personally responsible for selecting and carrying out a large share of the executions at this site between September 1943 and February 1944. After the war, Hujar was tried and executed in Krakow in 1946, alongside several other Plaszow camp personnel, in the same series of trials that condemned Amon Goeth.
Horst Pilarzik, another SS officer associated with executions at Plaszow, is also occasionally searched for by name; less is documented about his individual postwar fate compared to Goeth and Hujar, and records of his trial are less complete in English-language sources.
LIBAN GRANITE QUARRY: WORKING PRISONERS AND THE SCHINDLER’S LIST FILMING LOCATION
In 1873, the ‘’Liban and Ehrenpreis” mining company created an infrastructure for the extraction of limestone within this natural quarry. Its owners were two respected and wealthy Jewish families. At the time of the active exploitation of the quarry, even a railway line was tracked to its workshops in order to remove the extracted limestone with more efficiency. The presence of a quarry was one of the reasons for choosing a place to create the Plaszów labor camp in 1942. A number of the prisoners were occupied here, and the daily route through the main gate to bypass was an exhausting routine of work. Also, the SS and Kapo guards selected to monitor prisoners (often among criminals) often used to beat prisoners, and an unknown number of victims were killed right here, shot, or dropped down from abrupt cliffs of the quarry. The work was mainly occupied by the Poles and political prisoners, and the working day was divided into two shifts. From 6 am to 12 am and from 2 pm to 9 pm.
The Liban quarry was not used during the post-war period. It became well-known to the whole world as the movie location for Steven Spielberg’s legendary “Schindler’s List”. The film crew had recreated a smaller version of the Plaszow concentration camp, building up observation towers, 34 wooden barracks, a replica of the main gate of the camp, a copy of Amon Goeth’s villa on the hill, and a stable. After the shooting, most of the scenery was dismantled. Today, the Liban quarry is immersed in greenery, and an increasing area of it is being covered with a swamp.
MONUMENT TO THE VICTIMS OF 10 SEPTEMBER 1939: THE FIRST EXECUTIONS AT THE FUTURE PLASZOW SITE
German troops occupied the city of Krakow, abandoned by the Polish army, on September 6, 1939, just five days after the start of the Polish Campaign. Soon after, the unknown persons opened the railway car at the nearby Krakow Plaszow railway station and stole sacks of sugar. The Germans had decided to arrange a punitive action. Thirteen random local Poles, who had lived near the station, were captured. They were taken to the New Jewish Cemetery and shot right at one of its walls. During the years of the camp, barracks were built on the site of a mass shooting. In 1984, the local authorities installed a small memorial to the victims of the execution on September 10, 1939.
SARAH SCHENIRER GRAVESTONE: THE BAIS YAAKOV FOUNDER’S RESTORED MONUMENT AT PLASZOW
In 2005, a monument to a woman who had died in 1935 was restored in front of the Grey House. Sarah Schenirer initiated important changes in the system of public attitudes toward the education of women in Judaism, founding a whole movement and schools for girls, in which about 40,000 people had studied at the beginning of the Second World War. She was buried at the New Jewish Cemetery in 1935. With the beginning of the construction of the Plaszow camp, the cemetery was destroyed, and the gravestone of Schenirer was irretrievably lost. In 2005, a group of activists restored the gravestone supposedly on the spot where the original was before the war.
AMON GOETH’S VILLA (THE RED HOUSE): COMMANDANT’S RESIDENCE, THE BALCONY SHOOTINGS AND GOETH’S FATE AFTER THE WAR
The villa of camp commandant Amon Leopold Goeth stands on a small hill overlooking the former roll-call area, a short walk up Heltmana Street from the Grey House. Known to prisoners and survivors simply as the «Red House» for its brick-red colour, this is the single most searched-for location associated with Plaszow today.
After defining the boundaries of the Plaszow concentration camp, several streets turned out to be inside its perimeter: Jerozolimska, Abrahama, and Wiktora Hetmana. At Wiktora Hetmana 22 (Amon Goeth’s house address), there was a Polish house, which the Germans requisitioned as a villa for Amon Goeth, who moved here in September 1943. The delay was dictated by a personal order from Goeth to renew the house after its owners had been expelled. The commandant demanded to create a Viennese style since he was born and grew up in Vienna (Goeth had the NSDAP card № 510,764 since 1930 and the SS 43,673 membership in 1932. After the escape to Germany, he made his way back to Vienna after the March 1938 Anschluss. The decor was designed by the prisoners, and the villa included a bunker, an office, sports facilities, a bedroom, and a large kitchen. The Amon Goeth villa was accessible by means of two decorated iron gates, which have not been preserved to this day.
According to multiple survivor testimonies — including that of Mietek Pemper, Goeth’s own stenographer, and accounts cited in Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s Ark — Goeth would stand on the balcony of this villa with a rifle and shoot prisoners working below at random, for sport. Two dogs, Rolf and Ralf, trained to attack on command, were kept at the residence. The villa and its balcony became one of the defining images of Steven Spielberg’s «Schindler’s List» (1993), although the film’s balcony scenes were shot at a constructed replica in the nearby Liban Quarry (Section 11), not at the original building.
In 1944, it was planned to dig a large water reservoir of 60*10 meters near Amon Goeth’s house, and by the end of the war, only a large pit next to the villa remained. In 1944, an anti-aircraft tower with a heavy machine gun was built on a hill not far from the villa. A separate house for the commandants’ dogs was also constructed next to the Red House. After the war, the building was returned to a Polish family that had owned it before the occupation. Already in the XXI century, the Red House was in disrepair, but in 2015 it was sold, and the new owner initiated a full-fledged renovation of the Amon Goeth villa, which was completed in 2017.
What happened to Amon Goeth: Goeth was arrested by the SS itself in September 1944 on corruption charges (unrelated to his crimes against prisoners) and was in custody when the war ended. He was extradited to Poland, tried by the Supreme National Tribunal in Krakow, and found guilty of mass murder. He was hanged on 13 September 1946, on gallows specially constructed near the former Plaszow camp — one of the few Nazi war criminals executed at the actual site of their crimes. He has no marked grave; his remains were not returned to the family.
The villa today: The building is privately owned and inhabited — it is not open to the public and can only be viewed from the street. It is not part of the planned KL Plaszow Museum complex, unlike the Grey House.
My 4K video from the Plaszow site during a solo half-day walking across the area with all key locations.