krakow

This morning was pretty intense as we toured the Oskar Schindler Factory which is essenitally a museum depicting what happened during WW2 and Schindler;s part in it.It still baffles me today how Germany documented the atrocities that occurred during that time so some of the photos I put up may be a bit disturbing. Before WW2 there were roughly 56,000 Jewish people and by the time the Krakow ghetto was created the population had swollen to over 70,000 due to displacement from other areas under German rule, By the end of the way less than 3.700 survived (1/3 of those attributed to those working for Schindler). Life was not much better for those surviving Jews once the Communists came into power as anti-Semitism was rife and there were many attacks and deaths of the remaining Jews and many fled leaving less than 1000 living in Krakow today.

Our tour of the Schindler factory was just a piece of today, but for me the most poignant thing of the day was this simple square, known as the Jewish Heroes Square, with it's installment of 33 chairs which often goes unnoticed by many people. It represents the thousands of Jewish lives lost and the 1000s of chairs discarded at the square when the Jews were sent for "resettlement'. At first many believed the lies and the only piece of furniture they could carry with them was a chair,

The rest of the day was spent exploring the Kazimierz (the old Jewish quarter) and there was a lot of walking involved so I feel both physically and mentally exhausted so will sleep well tonight.

#kRakOw #pOlaNd