The ówPodgóKraków-Podgórze Detention Centre () is located at ul. Stefana Czarnieckiego 3 in Kraków, Poland, in the municipal district of Podgórze. Originally, it was a turn-of-the-century county court and revenue service, built in 1905, from design by Ferdynand Liebling. At present, it is a community branch of Detention Centre Kraków, with main building located at ul. Montelupich 7 street. The Kraków-Podgórze Detention Centre specializes in drug-and-alcohol-addiction therapy and serves also as a temporary arrest facility. It was created in 1971 as a prison for men with the holding capacity of 207. It was made into a detention facility in 1990. There's a medical clinic and a dentist on-site. Prisoners who completed the recovery program work with mentally and physically disabled clients.
During World War II, it was a Nazi German prison, a place of secret detention and torture of Polish members of the Resistance, Armia Krajowa. It is memorialized as a notorious site of martyrdom during the German occupation of Poland. The prison facility had a Gestapo station attached to it.
The prison was initially incorporated within the borders of the Kraków Ghetto when that district was created by the Nazis in March 1941; however, in the redistricting of June 1942 (following mass deportations of the Ghetto population) the whole street was placed outside the confines of the Ghetto.
Overview
In Polish literature, the prison is commonly referred to simply as więzienie przy ulicy Czarnieckiego ("the prison in Czarniecki Street"). The facility comprises the main building, constructed in 1905 (since 1996 listed in the register of historical monuments), and the adjoining parcel of land covering 3,133 square metres and surrounding the building on both sides and at the back (bounded on the south by the ulica Rękawka). The grounds were used by the Nazis as execution grounds during the Second World War which ended here with the liberation of Cracow on 18 January 1945. The facility was used by the Nazis as a de facto subsidiary (Zweiganstalt) of the significantly larger facility in the Montelupich Prison. Among the numerous victims murdered here is counted the Polish poet, Zuzanna Ginczanka. The prison is mentioned in the diaries of Holocaust survivors, such as Stanisław Taubenschlag (b. 1920; the son of Rafał Taubenschlag), and was the place of imprisonment by the Nazis of Polish elite represented by the sculptor, Jan Krzyczkowski (19101980). It appears in the memoirs of Tadeusz Pankiewicz, the proprietor of the famous Under the Eagle Pharmacy nearby, featured in the award-winning film, Schindler's List. The various methods of torture used by the Nazis against the detainees included an early form of waterboarding performed in a bathtub full of water, which close family members of the victims specially brought to the prison for the occasion were made to witness as an added terror tactic (e.g., in the case of Józef Świstak nom de guerre Bunkier, a member of the Szare Szeregi, d. 1944, whose mother was made to witness his martyrdom). The prison was a military target in the attempts by the Armia Krajowa to free prisoners incarcerated there. Most of those imprisoned at Czarnieckiego 3 could not be helped.
During the Nazi occupation of Poland, the total number of prisoners averaged at 150 at any one time: for example, the records for 25 May 1942 show a total of 165. On another occasion during the War, there were just 59 prisoners, including 5 women. Resistance movement was active within the prison, and prisoners had access to clandestine literature of the underground, while inside information on the prison was being secretly sent out to the Polish government-in-exile. On 3 February 1944 the prison was placed under the authority of the commander (Kommandeur) for the Cracow region (Distrikt Krakau) of the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police) and of the Sicherheitsdienst (Intelligence Service), at which time the existing prisoners were transferred to alternative locations. The post of the Kommandeur of these two services was occupied from September 1943 until the end of the Nazi rule in Cracow on 17 January 1945 by Rudolf Batz (19031961) who for fifteen and a half years after the War (until November 1960) avoided capture by living under an assumed identity.
After the War, the facility continued to be used by the communist authorities of Poland for detention of political prisoners in the Soviet-backed struggle for control over the Polish nation: in March 1946 the prison housed 275 inmates.