Bidspirit auction | ”Notice Issued by the Governor

”Notice Issued by the Governor of the City of Kraków Concerning the Establishment of Residential Areas for Jews” - The Official Notice Announcing the Confinement of Jews to the Ghettos of Radom, Kraków, and Galicia. November 1943 - Bekanntmachung des Stadthauptmanns der Stadt Krakau über die Bildung von Judenwohnbezirken / Obwieszczenie Stadthauptmanna der Stadt Krakau w sprawie tworzenia żydowskich dzielnic mieszkaniowych - ”Notice Issued by the Governor of the City of Kraków Concerning the Establishment of 'Residential Areas for Jews'” - Ghettos. An official bilingual Nazi poster (German and Polish) ordering the complete and final concentration of all Jews who remained alive in the Kraków district and its surrounding areas into the ghettos of the Radom, Kraków, and Galicia districts (prior to their deportation to the death camps). Kraków, November 18, 1942. The official notice issued by the Governor of the City of Kraków and Chief of Police, Hirsch (printed signature), setting forth the strict and draconian police regulations (Polizeiverordnung / Rozporządzenie policyjne) governing the establishment of ”Residential Areas for Jews” (ghettos) in various cities and districts within the Kraków District: Przemyśl, Reichshof (the German name for Rzeszów), Tarnów, Bochnia, and the Kraków-Land and Kraków-Stadt (Ghetto) districts. The poster establishes a final deadline for all Jews in these districts to relocate into the designated ghettos (by November 30, 1942). Beginning December 1, 1942, Jews were prohibited from being outside the Jewish residential quarter without a special police permit. The only exceptions were Jews employed in essential armaments factories or those confined in closed camps. Among its provisions appears the chilling penal clause explicitly stating that any Jew violating the regulations by leaving the ghetto without authorization was subject to the death penalty (”...werden nach den bestehenden Bestimmungen mit dem Tode bestraft” / ”podlegają według istniejących postanowień karze śmierci”). In addition, the death penalty was prescribed for any person who knowingly provided shelter to, concealed, or assisted a Jew outside the ghetto. Non-Jews entering the ghetto without authorization were liable to a fine of 1,000 złoty or imprisonment for three months. The notice also regulates the administration of the ghetto and the food supply (Section 4), defining the role of the Judenrat in the internal administration of the ghetto and assigning it sole responsibility for the equitable distribution of food supplied by the German authorities. The decree further states that these new regulations were issued pursuant to the order of the Higher SS and Police Leader in the General Government, Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger. The decree was officially published in Kraków on November 18, 1942, entered into force on November 20, 1942, and is signed at the end by the Chief of Police in Kraków, Hirsch, on behalf of the Governor of the City. The month of November 1942 represents one of the deadliest phases of Operation Reinhard, the campaign to annihilate the Jews of Poland. Following the first waves of mass deportations from the Kraków Ghetto and its surrounding areas to the Bełżec extermination camp during the summer and autumn of 1942, the Germans proceeded with the complete and final concentration of all Jews who remained alive in the district into a limited number of designated ghettos and labor camps (such as Bochnia and Tarnów). This rare poster, displayed in public places, documents the legal and administrative stage of sealing off the Jewish population, severing it from the local population, and imposing terror through the immediate death penalty for violators, a measure that preceded the final liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto in March 1943 by only a few months. Size: 42x60 cm. Tears and losses along the edges of the poster. Creases. Reinforced on the reverse with paper repairs. Moderate condition.