Education,  Travel

Fabryka Emalia Oskara Schindlera ~ Oskar Schindler’s Enamelware Factory

The Oskar Schindler Museum was very interesting to me and an important stop in our European tour this summer and fall.  I love Schindler’s List and thought it was so important to keep a part of the factory as a museum.  It was not my favorite part of town but factories are typically in the industrial part of the city so that was to be expected.

 

The outside of the factory still maintains some resemblance to the original factory and from the movie set.

 

 

 

The address.  These old street signs can still be found throughout Krakow today.

 

 

Everything about the Nazi regime exuded power, including the iconic swastika flags.  For some it must have been an awesome sight of German power and control and for others a dreaded fear of what was to come.

 

 

 

 

A photo of a very public hanging.  We saw this type of gallows in Auschwitz as well.  This type of public execution was meant to instill fear in the prisoners as well as to show Germanic control and the lack of leniency for even the most minor offense or just for not being Aryan.

 

 

This part of the museum was very moving.  These rooms were set us as cell blocks.  Very cold and the colors of the walls and patina was very similar to the actual cell blocks in Auschwitz.  The walls were covered in testimonials and photographs of actual prisoners.

 

 

For Jews and not for Jews.

 

 

A replica of the Krakow Ghetto walls, shaped like tombstones as an everyday reminder that the German Reich considers the inhabitants inside the walls as already dead.

 

 

A view of the building of the ghetto walls from the outside.

 

 

 

And a view of the inside…

 

 

The pharmacy.  If you have seen Schindler’s List then you will remember the pharmacy staff who mercifully poisoned some of the disabled persons in their care rather than have them murdered ruthlessly by the German soldiers.

 

 

The office of Oskar Schindler

 

 

 

The names of the “Schindler Jews” are etched in this wall of remembrance

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This room was very well done.  The glass pictures and cobblestone floors gave you the feeling of actually being a witness to these images.

 

 

 

 

With the exception of the children’s museum at Yad Vashem, this is the most moving and touching room I have ever been in.  The rotating towers speak of the prisoner’s experiences in English, German, Polish and Hebrew.  The remembrances are so raw and filled with feeling and emotion.  Some of them contained painful stories of selfishness in their fight for life and family.  It felt like hallowed ground.

 

 

A room to help you feel in a very small way what it must have been like inside the walls of stone and barbed wire.

 

 

 

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