As you leave the ghetto you drive by a factory made famous by Steven Speliburg. This is Oskar Schindler's factory and this is the place where Schindler's list was film. The factory is under renovations which prohibited us from entering it. Schindlers Jews were workers who were place in the care of Schindler by the Nazis.
Because of the movie it is like being able to see the workers standing in the factory yard. The movie runs through your mine and makes this place so much more real.

In the Center of the Krakow ghetto was a pharmacy called Pod Orlem. This pharmacy was run by a Polish gentile. (We were not allowed to take pictures of the interior of the pharmacy.) This gentile would help smuggle in information, food, medicine. The product in greatest demand from this pharmacy was not medicine, it was hairdye. The younger you look the longer you would live. The inside is quite small but you can't deny the power of one!

As we left the castle, we went to the section of Krakow that was sectioned off as a ghetto. The pictures you see are of the memorial in the square in the ghetto. You can see chairs in rows and that is all. It reminds me of the Oklahoma bombing memorial. The ideas of the chairs were chosen from a survivor of the ghetto who saw a group of children carrying chairs. When asked what they were doing, they replied that they had to leave their school and they were bringing the chairs so they would have a place to sit in their new school. Needless to say those children didn't survive. What would these children have brought to our world had they lived? What did we lose with those children. The Krakow ghetto was used as a supply of labor for factories that were established in and outside of the ghetto. One of the factories was the one run by Oscar Schindler. More pictures of that the next post
This is also a transportation depot so people use the chairs as they are waiting for their buses and and trams. This is ironic because streetcars would travel through the ghetto all the time, yet they were never allowed to make a stop.

As a teacher, I wonder how my students would respond in relationship to the threat of their schooling being cut off.

Once you get up to the top of the castle you see the cathedral that faces you. You realize that faith has been a intertwined with the ruling of this area for centuries.
The second picture is of the foundation of the original castle.
The last picture is of a courtyard where dignitaries and important political visitors are still entertained today. It is amazing to think that when the Nazis made this a their capital in the central government they enjoyed such accommodations.

After being in the Kazimierz and the old Jewish section we traveled back a few blocks from our hotel. I caught this couple celebrating their wedding. They were taking these photographs in front of the castle wall we were going to visit. From the next picture you can see the size of the wall. The next picture is the stairs we climbed to arrive at the top. These ramparts and balustrades are the markers of the the center for rules for centuries. As we arrived at the top of the stairs you see part of the view over the rest of the city.

These are pictures from inside the synagogue. This is from the 15th century. You see the alter in the front between the two pillars is kept the Torah, (first 5 books of the old testiment). The iron cage in the center is the place from where the reader reads. Directly behind the cage are the pews for the worshipers.
In looking at this picture I hope that you can get a sense of how small by comparing the room size to the people in the picture.




Sitting in these pews you can't help but wonder at the prayers that were offered up and were they any different in theme and desire from what we would hear someone pray today. Our commonality so out weights our differences!

In the last post was the picture of the gate to the synagogue, as you pass through the gate and a courtyard your are face to face with this Jewish cemetery.
The rocks place on the graves are placed in the Jewish faith to express memory and memorial to that person or persons. In the States we will place flowers at the grave on a anniversary to remember. One thing about the rocks is how sustaining they are in their remembrance.

In the next picture you are seeing the wall around the cemetery and synagogue. Many times the Nazis would take the heads stones from Jewish cemeteries for other purposes. Like building a wall. You can see some partial head stones used to help build this wall.

These are more pictures from Kazimierz the old Jewish section across the Vistula from Krakow. The is the birthplace of Helena Rubinstein, who develop a line of cosmetics that were used world wide.

This is the square in this old section which was the center of Jewish thought for centuries. This is demonstrated by the next picture of the oldest synagogue that is hundreds of years old.
Though this was at the end of the trip and weariness was definitely settling in, as I stood in the center of this section as closed my eyes you could almost hear the sounds of the people opening up their stores, the clap of horses on the cobblestones. The greetings, the arguing, the laughter of people before.

We traveled from Warsaw, went to Czestochowa on our way to Krakow. After the Germans invaded and conquered Poland they divided the land into three sections. They annexed the western part of Poland to become a part of Germany, The middle section was called the Central government, then the East section was under the control of Russia, the Nazis alli. Krakow was the capital of the Central Government and since it held the Nazi government the city survived the war with no damage. This city is on the Vistula river as you can see from the first picture. Krakow is the home of Jagiegiellonian University which has appoximately 155,000 students and one of the oldest universities in Europe. In fact I had dinner with a Jagiegiellonian student. She was a absolute delight!
Across the river is the old Jewish section in Krakow called Kazimierz. More about that in the next post.
The last picture is of our guide in Krakow.

As we left Warsaw for Krakow we stopped at Czeswtochowa. When you examine the Holocaust in Poland you learn that 1/2 of the 600,000 Poles killed were Polish Christians of whom most were Catholics. Poland has the highest number of Righteous Gentiles declared by Yad Vashem (The Holocaust Martrs' and Heroes Remembrance authority). To understand the Polish efforts to save Jews and at anti-Semitism in Poland you need to look at the relationship of the Catholic church to these two issues. To help do this we went to the Vatican of Poland, Czestochowa. The church their is likened to St. Paul's in Rome
In the first picture is our guide throughout the church. He held a parish in the United States and was a wonderful guide. I can't remember exactly where is parish way but he did refer to Chicago, Ill. which is the second largest Polish city due to its large Polish population.
The church was amazing in its ornamentation.

Taking some time after intensense days to share laughter and enjoy the moment.

After you walk past the areas where the different countries are recognized, you see this large field with all sorts of different shapes and sized of rocks are about in no form or pattern. Their uniqueness asaults your senses and they scream the uniqueness of each person murdered there. Then rising out of a field of rocks comes this large tower of granite. It is in your face but not with an attitude, but with a silent dignity. In about 16 months, approximately 375,000 parished. Do the math it's over 780 a day!
I try to imagine what I would think if I was a guard whose job it was to be apart of the selection process or supervising the gas chamber.