Unlike Warsaw, the city of Krakow
was not destroyed and later rebuilt after the Second World War. Its medieval
central square, castle, cathedrals, and even its synagogues remain—preserved,
as one of our tour guides said, by the Nazis in order to serve as a sort of
museum of an extinct race. Today, Krakow’s preserved history reminds today’s
visitors of the city’s rich, multicultural past.
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| Main square, Krakow, with typical Polish summer weather |
Despite the presence of very real
historical buildings and locations, including the nearby Auschwitz concentration
camp, Krakow’s Oskar Schindler Factory Museum also falls into the category of
museums attempting to evoke certain feelings in its visitors. It strayed,
however, from the idolization of national heroes that I had come to expect from
Polish museums. The museum is housed in what had been Schindler’s cookware factory,
where he employed several hundred Polish Jews from the nearby Kazimierz Jewish
district, and later the Krakow ghetto.
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| The Old Synagogue, the oldest synagogue still standing in Poland |
For the uninitiated, Schindler and
his wife bribed the Nazis—of which Oskar Schindler was a prominent member—in order
to keep their Jewish workers employed, and thus saved them from almost certain
death in extermination camps after the Krakow ghetto was liquidated. Because
Jews could only escape deportation by doing work directly related to the German
war effort, Schindler began manufacturing anti-tank grenades. Using his
connections with the Nazi party, Schindler was able to have 700 of his workers
who had been sent to the concentration camp at Gross-Rosen rerouted to his
munitions factory, where they waited out the rest of the war. Schindler and his
wife are credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jewish men and women from
extermination.
While the museum could have easily
become a shrine to the Schindlers’ heroic actions, only a small section is
dedicated to the couple. The rest of the museum focuses on Krakow during the
Nazi occupation (1939-45). The effect is certainly dramatic. One weaves through
Nazi flags that are suspended from a hallway ceiling and into a room where the
floor is paved with swastikas, forcing the visitor to trample upon the symbol
of the Third Reich. Visitors can walk through a mock-up of a family’s cramped
ghetto living quarters. There is contemporary film footage and audio throughout
the museum, showcasing everything from weekly markets to the roundup of Jews
for relocation. There is a strong note
of sympathy for all of Krakow’s residents, not just those targeted for
elimination by the Nazis. Like the Warsaw Uprising Museum, the Polish population
is portrayed through personal testimony and interviews sprinkled into every
exhibit. While personal stories do bring the past into the present, the heroic
overtones throughout the museum may again be attempting to invoke an
uncomfortable level of nationalism.
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| Swastika floor in the Oskar Schindler Factory |
The most striking exhibit is the
centerpiece of the museum, Schindler’s office, where a map of Europe discovered
during construction hangs behind Schindler’s desk.[1]
In the center of the room, however, is a ceiling-high glass enclosure that is
filled with unfinished enamelware like that produced in the factory. Visitors
can walk through the center of the cube and read the names of the 1,200 Jews
that were saved: Schindler’s list.
At the end of the museum, visitors
walk through a short, unlit hallway over a rubbery floor that serves as one
final multi-sensory reminder of the confusion Krakow’s inhabitants faced during
occupation. Just before exiting the factory into the courtyard, one is thrust
into a white, circular room, where turning pillars set into the wall are reminiscent
of the scrolls of the Torah. The museum calls it the Room of Choices. Printed
on the walls in Hebrew, German, Polish, French, English, and other languages
are quotes from those who, like the Schindlers, chose to take action against
the Nazis by helping the persecuted. It is a thought-provoking way to end a
visit to a museum that often seemed to have only one thought it wished to
convey: that life in Krakow under Nazi occupation was horrendous. But by ending
on the Room of Choices, the museum asks the visitor to look inward to his or
her own morality, and ask, ‘Would I have done the same?’ In this way the
museum, which until that point had borne the brunt of bringing the past into
the present, forces the visitor to reflect, and carry those thoughts out into
the world.
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| The Room of Choices, Oskar Schindler Factory |
Kelsey
Allagood is a Master of Arts candidate in Conflict Resolution at Georgetown
University. She recently traveled to Poland and Germany with Georgetown’s
School of Foreign Service in Qatar with the Zones of Conflict, Zones of Peace
Program. Her travel was facilitated by Georgetown University's Master of Arts
program in Conflict Resolution.
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