Remembering the Nazi Occupation

Arriving back in the Old Town Tom and I found a lovely restaurant to eat in (well outside of) in the Jewish Quarter. After lunch, we explored the area on the other side of the river Vistula. We came across the “Ghetto Heroes Square”, formerly known as Zgody Square, where during World War 2, selections would take place for the residents of the ghetto which meant life or death. Those selected to leave the ghetto were boarded onto trains and sent either to Płaszów, Belzec, or Auschwitz. Some would not even make it to the train; the elderly, sick and young, were often executed in the streets, in their homes, or even on the square itself. Today, it contains an artistic installation designed to memorialise the victims of the Ghetto. The 33 oversized chairs look back to the square’s history and the empty furniture that was discarded there. The chairs convey man’s inhumanity towards man. They capture a moment in history where human life was discarded with as much care and thought as the furniture piled in the square once was. Each chair represents a thousand lives.
Subdued, we walked on past the Empty Chairs and made our way to our ultimate destination; The Schindler Factory. Made famous by the Stephen Spielberg film; Schindler’s List, Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist, humanitarian, and member of the Nazi Party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories in occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Schindler's List, reflect his life as an opportunist initially motivated by profit who came to show extraordinary initiative, tenacity, courage, and dedication in saving his Jewish employees' lives and who in turn on the liberation of Poland and the end of the war saved the life of Oskar Schindler.Read more