From the street it still looks like what it was in 1945, a small factory in an out-of-the-way industrial part of South Kraków. Inside Oskar Schlinder’s “Factory of Enamelled Vessels” (Fabryka Schindlera), it is more than a tribute to the heroic efforts of Schlinder, the factory-cum-museum is a recreation of Jewish life in Kraków in WWII under the Nazi Occupation.

Wartime streetcar

An elderly Jewish volunteer guided us through a “rabbit warren” of narrow corridors and rooms which conveyed what the experience of Polish Jews living under the Third Reich must have been like in a city known by the German, Krakau during WWII. She showed us the museum’s permanent exhibition (entitled “Kraków under Nazi Occupation 1939-1945”) which recreates the conditions and deprivations of Jewish residents of the city. Film screenings and interactive exhibits help to convey the experience.

Impress machine & Swastika floor design

Among the interactives I liked the impress device which lets you stamp time-line cards which mark significant moments in the Occupation. The sense of oppression is underscored by the swastika floor design and by the other Nazi iconography on the walls (exceedingly uncomfortable feeling!). There were also displays of uniforms, a tank, a tram, even a hair salon, etc. The tour also gave us a feel for what the living conditions of the Jewish factory workers were like (crowded!).

Schlinder’s Desk

The final section of the factory visited is the office and desk of Schlinder himself (and that of his personal secretary with her aged typewriter still in place on the table). Oskar’s office still contains his own, original desk, a sturdy wooden one in the same working state in was in 1945. Behind it is a wartime map of Europe. Opposite the desk is the striking exhibit they call the “Survivors’ Arc”, a glass tower full of tin pots, a stark reminder of what the enslaved labourers were there to produce.

The elderly lady guide was excellent, very informative … in the meticulous care she took in presenting the tour you could see how important, personally, the museum was to her in preserving the memory of what happened.

Survivors’ Arc