Looking for Schindler
At the beginning of August I was in Poland with the project Expedition Inside Culture which is very dear to me. We decided to spend the last two days of the trip in Krakow and Vali and I wanted to go see other parts of the town we haven’t visited before, like Schindler’s factory. We took a map and one morning we crossed Wisla to see what’s on its left side. We got to the industrial part of the city. Factories, cars, constructions, dogs. So far nothing special. We passed the building we were looking for because we didn’t actually see the shy plaque on one of it’s lateral walls. A few minutes later, the tourist cars showed up and the English, French and German explanations let us know we were in the right place. Unfortunately, besides the size of the factory I can’t actually say I noticed much because the entrance was covered and the acces was banned. Fortunately, they are renovating the building to turn it into a museum so maybe next time I will see more of it.
*the white building is the actual factory*
But this is only the beginning of it. Vali was determined to get to a square with big chairs in it Radu had told him about. It was a monument honouring somebody. We looked for it a lot, asked people on the street, met a really nice Polish girl who comes to Romania from time to time and finally we saw something that resembled a chair 100m away from we were. Still, nobody could actually tell us where this misterious square was.
If we got so far let’s take a look around. In front of us there was an information point and next to it another monument which told us something about what had happened there.
Next to it there was the map which saved us. We were in the place where the Krakow Ghetto used to be. The square was built because at the moment the ghetto was evacuated, all the furniture and other things belonging to the Jews were tossed in the street. Based on the two maps we had and the guide we bought from there, we walked around a bit trying to find the buildings which were sewer entrances they used to get out of the ghetto or the buildings they said they used for extermination. We found some of them more alive than ever. Obviously, that neighbourhood is rebuilt and people live and work there, but if you know what you’re looking for, you’ll surely find marks of history (like the bullet holes in the building).
We later discovered we had passed by a part of the actual wall of the ghetto. It had something written on it but we couldn’t read it.
We went to the Jewish cemeteries nearby where surprisingly enough, the most impressive things aren’t the graves, but the walls. They’re built out of the pieces of tomb stones used by the Nazis to build the pavement leading to the concentration camp. In my opinion, it is one of the most morbid things one could do as a human being.
I had see many places with the same history. After Auschwitz on a cold and rainy day, I think I can say I felt a bit of what these places are meant to tell us. Still, the fact that these pieces of history are still there in a natural state, without processing, maintainance, museums, media, tourists surprised and impressed me and the fact that nobody knew about them saddened me. It was my third time in Krakow and nobody ever told me what was on the left side of Wisla. It makes me think about all the things I don’t know about Bucharest.
