Visit to the Schindler Factory in Cracow.

The Schindler factory is located in the Zablocie district in Cracow, within walking distance from Plac Bohaterow Getta (in Podgorze). Today, it is a museum which displays all the historical period since the trigger of Second World War till the Soviet occupation of Poland.               

   

 

The factory welcomes the visitor with a large plaque which reads: 'Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire'. It was erected by the Jewish Community Council of Cracow and Students and Faculty of Albion College (Michigan, USA) as you can see in the photograph.

  

The permanent exhibition in the museum is called “Kraków under Nazi Occupation (1939-1945)”.

Click on the video: Cracow under WWII

As soon as you enter the museum, you start being told the history of Poland at the time of WWII, how people from a variety of countries and cultures used to live as neighbours in a peaceful society, what they used to do to earn their living, their free time activities and hobbies... and, step by step, you are immersed in the story you are listening to, with the help of both settings and sounds. You realise how a cosmopolitan society is turned into madness and hatred.

          

You will visit rooms which convey to the visitor each of the feelings experienced by the people during that period by means of photographs, posters, clothes, tools, cards, toys, letters..., and even videos of survivors from the concentration camps.

Click to see the photographs

You can see Nazi propaganda everywhere on the walls and shelves as the starting of war keeps approaching. After passing a room where several military uniforms, arms, helmets and a small tank are displayed together with a map which shows how Poland was divided amongst Germans and Russians following a plan, you proceed to a corridor decorated with flags adorned with the swastika. In the meantime, the guide explains why education was erased from Poland: 'uneducated people are easy to control'.

Click on the video: Life in Cracow during WWII part 1

The type of surface you walk on keeps changing from room to room, depending on the historical moment you are going by or the place you are visiting in a particular room. At times, you will notice the floors are stone-tiled in some spaces, while, in others, they are covered with sand or gravel (in the case of the spot which stands for the concentration camp in Cracow) or you will find coloured designs in other cases, but the most remarkable floor is the one which displays tiles decorated with the Nazi swastika.

Click on the video: Life in Cracow during WWII, part 2

 

You even reach the Jewish train and tram stations where you will notice how the Nazis replaced the Polish names of the streets with German ones. They wanted to change the spirit of the town. For example they changed the name of the Market Square (Rynelk Glowny) to Adolf Hitler's Platz.

The stamps machines which provided different identity documents to those people walking in Poland are striking as well.

And, then, you enter the ghetto where several rooms show you how people used to live there.

Schindler's office as well as his accountant's, the Jewish Itzhak Stern, are kept exactly as they were left. There is a cylindrical shelf with a hollow interior which has been filled in with casseroles (made at the factory). They can be seen from the outside, at the front, as soon as you enter the room. If you proceed to the back of the transparent shape, you will see the names of dead Jews. You will pass a barbershop as well. The ghetto was like a city inside the city.

Click on the video: Life in Cracow during WWII, part 3 (The Ghetto versus Oskar Schindler)

Eventually, you approach the end of the exhibition. You will get to the Soviet invasion and you will finish the tour with a homage to all those who suffered, a white room filled in with survivors statements. At the end, you will see the photographs of many Jews that Oskar Schindler was able to save, who knows why...

Fonts:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1e/Commemorative_plaque_Schindler%27s_Emalia_Factory_in_Krakow.JPG/640px-Commemorative_plaque_Schindler%27s_Emalia_Factory_in_Krakow.JPG?1492200262318

(Photograph of the entrance plaque).

Giant Wyrm, by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Scottt Buckley:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

http://www.scottbuckley.com.au/wp-content/audio/sb_fading.mp3