The text is based on an article by Dr Edyta Gawron published in issue 231/232 of Alma Mater journal (March-April 2022) – the link is available below.
Stasin and Niemen villas in the town of Rabka, currently used as staff guesthouses of the Jagiellonian University, were among three buildings that from June to August 1945 housed a Jewish children’s home, also known as a care and treatment centre. Each of the buildings accommodated at least several dozen boys and girls saved from the Holocaust. On 28 August 1945 the centre was closed down due to repeated antisemitic attacks posing danger the occupants’ lives. The children were evacuated to other care institutions.
Jews were among the patients coming to Rabka health resort from its very beginning. One of the most visible groups of visitors were children, whose needs were catered for by specially created and adapted hotels and guesthouses. The greatest contribution to the popularity of Rabka health resort among Jews was made by summer camps for Jewish children, organised by the Association for Curative Summer Camps in Rabka, based in Kraków. Initiated by Kraków teacher Salomon Spitzer, they took place regularly from 1890 to the outbreak of the Second World War.
Initially, children participating in the summer camps were accommodated in private lodgings, until 1907, when a dedicated building, funded by Maria and Wilhelm Frankl, started to be used. In the years to follow, it was successively remodelled and better adapted to the needs of young patients.
Besides the health resort visitors, Rabka also had its own local Jewish community. In the interwar period (1918–1939) it grew from over one hundred to about 450 people, which, combined with the temporary presence of and support from many more Jews visiting the resort, was enough to sustain basic Jewish institutions, such as a synagogue, a matzah bakery, a bathhouse, and a refuge for the poor and elderly.
Regrettably, Jews in Rabka were affected by antisemitic sentiments that intensified in the 1930s, with some voices criticising the very presence of Jews in the health resort and the local press calling for economic struggle against them.
The history of the Jewish Community in Rabka was brought to an abrupt end by the Second World War and the Holocaust, in which millions European Jews, including about 90 percent of Polish Jews, perished at the hands of Nazi Germans and their collaborators.
In January and February 1945, which marked the end of military operations in the Małopolska region, the Jewish survivors started to emerge from hiding. They included orphaned children in need of care. One of the first places to accommodate them was the building of the Provincial Jewish Committee in Kraków at ul. Długa 38.
Because of the health condition of most of the survived children, a need arose to create a proper care and treatment centre for the young patients, and a relevant plan based on pre-war experiences was prepared. Rabka was chosen as a natural location of such an institution, due to its pre-war status of a health resort popular with Kraków Jewry. Yet, the establishment of a Jewish orphanage in this town was by no means an easy task, both because of the lack of vacant buildings and an unfriendly attitude from local authorities and some local residents.
Finally, the children’s home in Rabka, aimed to accommodate most severely ill young patients, was opened at the turn of June and July 1945. It consisted of three buildings – Stasin, Juras and Niemen villas, which provided quarters for one hundred children, mainly from Kraków, Warsaw, and Łódź.
Unfortunately, during the very first weeks of their stay in Rabka, the children became target of attacks, which included throwing of a grenade into the Niemen villa one day after the Kraków pogrom of 11 August 1945. Fortunately, no one was hurt.
The documents, found by Karolina Panz, who conduted research into the post-war history of Jews in the Podhale region, indicate that the assault was organised by students and teachers of Jan Wieczorkowski’s secondary school for men. The researcher claims that the threatening letters were allegedly authored by Rev. Józef Hojoł and anonymously delivered to the orphanage authorities by Mieczysław Klempka, known as ‘Kot’ (cat) – a leader of underground scout movement in the above-mentioned school. The messages contained threats of repression if the children do not leave Rabka.
The second attack on the orphanage took place on 19 August 1945, when all three buildings were hit with machine gun fire and grenades. Another incident happened on 27 August. Again, there were no casualties. For unclear reasons, members of local police and state security service did not intervene. The officers from the town of Nowy Targ delegated to protect the children were also absent from the crime scene.
On 28 August 1945, a decision to close down the Jewish orphanage in Rabka was made. The children who had parents or guardians were returned to them. Some orphans were relocated to children’s homes in Otwock and Bielsko. Those most badly ill and without any chances for receiving care from relatives were taken to an orphanage in Zakopane.
The fear of further attacks turned out to be well founded, since at night on 28–29 August 1945 the Zakopane orphanage was fired at with machine guns. Fortunately, like during previous incidents, no one was injured, but in the following weeks the institution was subject to verbal attacks and written threats. As local security services refused to protect the children, the institution was closed down in mid-March 1946. The orphanage director decided that the children should be moved abroad.
On 18 March 1946 most children, accompanied by the staff and several soldiers, boarded a lorry, crossed the state border in Cieszyn and entered Czechoslovakia, from where they went to France. The children who stayed in Zakopane – 22 half-orphans or those under guardians’ care – went to Kraków together with one staff member.
So ends the short and dramatic history of post-World War II Jewish children’s homes in Podhale.
More information on this and related issues is available in the following articles published in Alma Mater journal (Polish version only):