Józefa

This guide to Józefa street in Kraków's Kazimierz district opens in nineteen ninety-three, when Steven Spielberg's crew filled a quiet courtyard here with extras in yellow armbands to shoot a scene for Schindler's List, barely needing to alter the setting. It traces the real history behind that scene, the eviction courtyards saw during the wartime ghetto, and the district's origins after King John the First Albert pushed Kraków's Jews into Kazimierz's Bawół quarter in fourteen ninety-five. You'll pass number thirty-eight, a synagogue built so its prayer hall sat a full story above the street.