For our last afternoon in Krakow we went to the Schindler Factory Museum. To get there we walked out of Kazimierz and crossed the Wisła to 4 Lipowa street . It was a little hard to find, but well worth the effort. If you’re lazy you can pay the highway robbery and get a “golf cart cab” from Kazimierz to 4 Lipowa.
This museum is very interactive, and uses surprising tactics to engage the visitors, including audio recordings playing in the background… train station sounds, announcements being made over loudspeakers, etc.
This museum’s ambitious goal is not just to tell you the same ole story you can get from Steven Spielberg, but to educate you with background and contemporary details, to give you the whole picture. For instance, I learned that Germany rolled into Poland on the unofficial last day of summer and had seized control within 20 days. They then step you through time, as the net closes around Krakow’s Jews, leading to the social circumstances where Schindler could do what he ultimately did.
We got there too late to watch the entire film they show in the first section of the museum, as they don’t show it during the last two hours of the day. We saw the last 10 minutes, and it looked really interesting. So if you go, plan your time accordingly.
Sadly, by the time we hit this museum I was totally saturated with facts of this atrocity and experiencing emotional overload. So about halfway through I just checked out. And so did Barb. So we blew through the exhibits and headed back to Kazimierz.
This looked like an interesting quote., and I really wanted to understand what “the famous overcoat button” means, and who is Julian Waga… So I snapped this photo. But my friend Google seems to know nothing about this.
After the occupation of Poland, Germany apparently created two administrative areas. One in Krakow. And one in Radom - my fair city…
