But wait! We returned to Krakow today, a cold and rainy day, and guess what? It was a totally different city. The rain kept the tour groups at bay and the city seemed to glow. We walked many of the same streets and saw new things. Or the same things from a different perspective. How sad always to be in a crowd. We spent a wonderful hour out of the rain in the Pharmacy Museum, eight rooms in a wonderfully preserved townhouse, packed with the "thises and thats" of pharmacy - from herbs to mortars and pestles to grind them. Both Connie's brother and neice are pharmacists and we wish they could have seen this. A "famous" Krakow pharmacist, Tadeusz Pankiewicz, was profiled for his refusal to leave his pharmacy in the Jewish Ghetto and secretly provide the Jews trapped inside with medicine, contraband goods and communication with the outside world.
Tadeusz Pankiewicz, Pharmacist
We wandered around the former Jewish Ghetto. The Nazis forced the 3000 "Aryan" residents out and moved in 17,000 Krakow Jews. Each person was alloted about 20 square feet of living space. Then the Nazis walled the ghetto off from the rest of the city. Jews were not allowed to leave; no one else was allowed in.
Cemetery, Jewish Ghetto
It all came together when we visited the Shindler Factory Museum, the same building where Oskar Shindler, he of the list, helped save 1000 Jews from certain death in the camps during the Nazi occupation. There is little there about Shindler but a film with commentary from his Polish workers told the story of how "his Jews" lived better than others and how Schindler, hearing of a plan to take his workers to the camps, warned them so they could disappear in the night. Now the factory is a museum about the Nazi occupation of Krakow and the hardships faced by both Poles and Jews. While I was aware of most of what went on, a feeling of dread crept into my bones. How anyone coped with such humiliation and brutality is beyond me. And how anyone could inflict it is inconcievable.
