05/12/2026
For our May General Meeting on Thursday, May 21st at 7:00pm, we are hosting Erez Cohen, a family historian and director of Hillel at the University of Illinois.
Erez will present “Across the Square: The Story of a Jewish Hero”, where he will share how he travelled to Krakow, Poland in 2019 in search for answers about his grandmother’s Holocaust story. Please join us as he shares the heroic story of the Krakow Jewish Resistance and other incredible finds from this deeply personal journey.
The Moultrie County History Center is located at 1303 South Hamilton, Sullivan. Please call (217) 728-4085 for more details.
Edited to add: As always, this event is free and open to the public.
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To situate Erez’s presentation in historical context, information and photos from the Krakow Ghetto are presented below. All materials are sourced from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s website.
“From March 3–20, 1941, German authorities announce, establish, and seal a ghetto in Krakow, Poland. Between 15,000 and 20,000 Jews are forced to live within the ghetto boundaries, which are enclosed by barbed-wire fences and, in places, by a stone wall.
A Jewish resistance movement existed in the Krakow ghetto from the time the ghetto was established in 1941.
In March 1943, the SS and local police liquidate the Krakow Ghetto.
During the operation the SS kill approximately 2,000 Jews in the ghetto and transfer about 8,000 Jews, including the members and families of the Jewish council, and the Krakow ghetto police force to Plaszow. The SS and Police transport approximately 3,000 more Krakow Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the camp authorities select 499 men and 50 women for forced labor. The rest, approximately 2,450 people, are murdered in the gas chambers.”
