Kraków Day 5: Schindler Factory

Today we take a tour of the Schindler Factory, the one many people learned about as portrayed in Spielberg's film Schindler's List .  The museum is mainly about the experiences of those, especially the Jewish population, in Krakow during WWII and life during Nazi occupation.  There's nothing really that shows it as a factory - Schindler moved the factory contents to set up shop in Czechoslovakia in 1944 as conditions became extreme for his Jewish workers.

Most of the exhibits were more of the graphical, text, and photo display variety, so we didn't take a lot of photos. 

Here are a sampling of possessions that were pilfered from Jewish victims of the Holocaust

A display holding pots and pans of the same type made in the factory.  There's 1,200 of them representing all those on Schindler's list that he was able to save - all the names are shown on the inside walls of the "cube".

Looking out the "back lot" at more of the factory structures.  Recent modern condos loom overhead in the background.

Wheeled bins used to transport factory materiel.

Photos of those save by Schindler.

Some sort of wire fed factory assembling machine.

Just outside the museum was this display - a preview of what we'd see in Gdansk in several days.

"Ghetto Heroes Square" - there's 68 empty bronze chairs representing the 68,000 Jews taken from Krakow during the Holocaust - this square is where Jews from across the Krakow area arrived and then were forced to settle into the ghetto bringing what belongings they could manage to carry, furniture in some cases.  In this same square, when they were deported to Auschwitz, selections were made, and they were put on trains alongside the square and sent to the camps.

Kazimierz, across the river Vistula from Krakow, was an independent city until the 1800's where it was absorbed into Krakow.    It contained a thriving Jewish district, up until WWII, when the Nazis arrived and set up the ghetto.  Here's a short section of the old city's defensive walls.

Some remains of lettering of former Jewish businesses maintained from earlier days.

Heading back to our lodging.