
Podgórze
Historic riverside district that became a walled Nazi ghetto, now marked by a square of empty memorial chairs.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Podgórze in Kraków opens in 1943 behind a pharmacy counter, as a mother sedates her sleeping toddler to keep him quiet while soldiers search the street. It centers on Tadeusz Pankiewicz, the one non-Jewish Pole allowed to keep a shop open inside the walled ghetto the Nazis sealed off here in March 1941, and on what he chose to do with that permission once thousands of Jewish families were forced into these few blocks. Listen for the pharmacy's old address as you walk the square, now the site of the district's memorial.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Apteka pod Orłem
Former ghetto pharmacy where a Polish chemist hid papers, medicine and refugees behind ordinary drawers.
Ghetto Heroes Square
Seventy oversized empty chairs memorialize Jewish ghetto residents deported from this exact spot.
Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory
Former enamelware plant turned wartime rescue site, now a museum on Nazi-occupied city life.
Kazimierz
Historic former Jewish quarter of cobbled squares, synagogues, and courtyards turned Schindler's List film set.
Józefa
Historic Jewish-quarter street lined with synagogues and a courtyard once used as a Schindler's List film set.
Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau
Preserved Nazi death camp of barracks, barbed wire and a starvation cell, now a memorial to over a million victims.