Walking Through Jewish Krakow

Numerous walking tours start from Krakow's historic main square and after my conference finished on Friday Irit and I went on one of them. We were both travelling to Bucharest the following day and Irit, an Israeli lady I've met at conferences for some years and I decided to walk through the remains of what was once a vibrant Jewish community, Kazimierz. We were staying at the same hotel, so it was easy to meet up and walk to the start of the tour only 3 minutes away. It was an interesting excursion as these pictures show, starting with an old and historic synagogue that survived the second world war. 

The market square nearby was lined with stores owned by the local Jewish community and embedded in it was a second synagogue shown here with its inscription.

The square also contained an Israeli Restobar, whatever that is and a holocaust memorial.

Then there was a third, ultra-orthodox synagogue in the street.

Nearby was a Jewish community centre funded with some support - financial and otherwise - from one Charles, Prince of Wales - heir to the British throne

The next move was to another market, in which Krakow abounds.

This led to a film set for the production of Schindler's List. If any of you have seen the film you might recognise this picture which is of a real place. The story, Schindler's Ark, was written by Australian author Thomas Keneally, and adapted for film by Steven Spielberg winning many Oscars.

The walk then headed to the Vistula River, the main river of Poland flowing down through Warsaw. Even here, hundreds of km away it is broad and placid. The bridge across it shown in the coming slides is famous for several things. It leads to the site of the former Jewish ghetto, is famous for its padlocks which are placed there in locked position by newly married couples - we saw this being done, and the bridge somewhat resembles the Isambard Kingdom Brunel bridge across the Tamar at Plymouth.

 
 And so on the ghetto past street paintings like this bell ringing over the heads of people in a crowd to see a point where some lucky people escaped the ghetto and avoided transit to Auschwitz - Birkenau or similar locations and a horrible fate. The assembly ground for deportation is now covered in metal chairs (a work of art) facing the deportation office. And the plaque shown is on the wall of the ghetto.

And our final destination was this innocuous building where Oskar Schindler had his factory in which men from the ghetto worked and were eventually saved by spiriting them off to Slovakia.

All in all this was an interesting historical walk and well done our guide for explaining the detail of what I've said above.

AS