Podgórze, once an independent town and part of Krakow since 1915, lies picturesquely on the right bank of the Vistula. The district had a strong working-class culture and was home to important industrial plants. On 3 March 1941, the German occupiers decided to establish a sealed ghetto here. An area that had housed approximately 3,000 people before the war was used to confine around 17,000 Krakow Jews. Across approximately 20 hectares and 320 buildings, only 3,167 rooms were available—around two square metres of living space per person.
After two major deportation operations to the Bełżec extermination camp, the ghetto was divided into two sections: Ghetto A for those able to work and Ghetto B for those unable to work. Many workers were employed in nearby factories, including Oskar Schindler’s German Enamelware Factory. The final liquidation took place on 13 and 14 March 1943. Around 6,000 Jews considered fit for work were deported to the Plaszow concentration camp, while approximately 2,000 people were killed during the operation. The youngest victims, particularly children under 14, were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Of approximately 70,000 Jews who had lived in Krakow, only around 1,000 survived the war.
Important sites in Podgórze include:
- the former Oskar Schindler Factory, now part of the Museum of Krakow and presenting the period of German occupation,
- the Eagle Pharmacy and its moving exhibition about the ghetto,
- surviving fragments of the ghetto wall and the powerful Empty Chairs Memorial dedicated to Krakow’s murdered Jewish residents.
The Eagle Pharmacy was the only pharmacy inside the ghetto. It was run by Tadeusz Pankiewicz, the only non-Jewish resident permitted to live there. The building served as a secret refuge and an important contact point for the Jewish community. Today, it houses a moving exhibition commemorating both the destruction of Krakow’s Jews and Pankiewicz’s courageous work. His memoir, “The Krakow Ghetto Pharmacy”, has been translated into many languages.
Sections of the original wall survive in two important locations: on Lwowska Street near its junction with Józefińska Street and behind a school building at the corner of Limanowskiego and Rękawka streets. These fragments are silent witnesses to a dark past.
The factory at 4 Lipowa Street was founded in 1937 to produce enamel and metal goods. In 1939, the German businessman Oskar Schindler took control and developed it into an important supplier to the German military. From 1943, it also produced cooking equipment, cartridge cases and detonators. Schindler replaced many Polish workers with Jewish prisoners from the nearby Plaszow camp, whose number reached approximately 1,100 by 1944. As the front approached and camps were being liquidated, Schindler and his accountant Izaak Stern compiled a list—now known as Schindler’s List—of Jewish employees and members of their families.
The story of the factory and its owner was recorded in Thomas Keneally’s novel “Schindler’s Ark” and inspired Steven Spielberg’s internationally acclaimed film “Schindler’s List”. Today, the administrative building is part of the Museum of Krakow. Its 45 rooms present the history of the city during the occupation, focusing on the fate of the Jewish population, resistance and life in the factory.
Plaszow, a Krakow district near Podgórze, was established by the German occupiers in autumn 1942 as a forced-labour camp on the grounds of two destroyed Jewish cemeteries. Prisoners worked in a nearby quarry, workshops inside the camp and businesses elsewhere in the city, including Schindler’s factory.
In mid-1943, it was expanded into a concentration camp covering around 80 hectares and holding approximately 25,000 prisoners, most of them Jewish. It served as a transit point for Jews from other ghettos and from Slovakia and Hungary on their way to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Construction of gas chambers and crematoria began but was never completed.
As the front approached, the camp was gradually liquidated from autumn 1944. Prisoners were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Stutthof. An estimated 150,000 people passed through the camp. The precise number of victims is difficult to establish: around 8,000 were executed, while many others died from hunger, disease and inhumane treatment. During the destruction of evidence, the Germans removed 17 lorry-loads of human ashes.
Today, the largely overgrown site has no fixed visitor route. Memorials nevertheless mark the execution area and mass graves, while two plaques, a cross and surviving outlines of barracks, camp roads and the Jewish cemetery recall the lives and suffering of prisoners. The so-called Grey House, formerly the headquarters of the Jewish burial society and later an SS prison and torture site, and the villa of camp commandant Amon Göth have also survived. The reality of the camp and the actions of its commandant were portrayed in Steven Spielberg’s film “Schindler’s List”.
