Greetings!
Our travels took us to Warsaw on Thursday, by train from Krakow. In the morning, a local guide (Deedee) walked us through some areas of the oldest section of the Jewish Quarter in Podorze. We visited Oskar Shindler's Enamel Factory. Next to a museum which provides a unique perspective on life in Krakowfrom 1939 to 1945, displaying 45 meticulously assembled rooms designed to show what streets, hair salons, train stations, and more looked like in Krakow during this contentious period in history.
We then walked to the
Ghetto Heroes Square, dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Krakow Ghetto. The former Concord Square was the place where 300,000 Jews had to congregate to be deported. In 1943, when all but 15,000 young and employable residents had been deported, the belongings which the Jews had managed to carry on their last journey to Plaszow or Auschwitz accumulated on the square.
According to Tadeusz Pankkiewicz, the proprietor of a chemist shop at number 18 on the square. “An incalculable amount of furniture which had been carried backwards and forwards countless times was rotting”. That witness, who was not a Jew, ran Apteka Pod Orlem, a chemist's shop at number 18 of the square which was the only one in the whole Ghetto which the Nazis allowed to continue with its activity due to the fear of spreading epidemics. Taking advantage of the concession, the pharmacy provided the Jews not only with medicine, but also with smuggled groceries, information from the outside and a space for the clandestine meetings of the resistance.
In the Old Jewish Quarter in Kazimierz, we visited the Remah Synagogue, and then peered into one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries.
No comments:
Post a Comment