Kraków Ghetto Registrations - Series II

In 2000, a list of about 19,500 Jews forced to register for the Krakow Ghetto was released on JewishGen. It's contents can be searched at the JewishGen Krakow Ghetto Database.

In 2001, a new 'Second Series' of Ghetto Registrations was found at Yad Vashem. These registrations are written in German and were recorded in 1941. They are located on five microfilm reels, and contain probably over 15,000 individual registrations. The information for each individual usually contains the following:

• photo
• maiden name (if married female)
• name of spouse
• name of children
• birth dates of children
• often names of mother or siblings (if living in same house)
• birth date
• birth place
• years living in Kraków (if birth was not in Kraków)
• occupation
• address

The importance of these documents cannot be over-emphasized. These documents are far more comprehensive than the 'first series' that was indexed in 2000. Also, since documents such as vital records, census documents, etc., are 'frozen' for a period of 100 years by the Kraków Archives, this documentation is probably the closest we can get to a census of pre-holocaust Jewish Kraków residents. Note, too, that this document contains considerable data on registrants who moved from surrounding towns, such as Gorlice, Tarnow, Nowy Sanz, and Debnica, to Kraków in the decades prior to World War II. This data should thus also be of value to researchers of those towns.

An attempt is currently being undertaken to extract the data from these records and make it available via JewishGen. We will keep you informed.