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Published: October 17th 2017
Today was a long, good day in Krakow, Poland! I like Polandia ? Kamie is ready to come home but I was up and ready to go again just like usual. He slept-in… a little bit. We left at 9am for a tour to the Jewish Ghetto. The ghettos here do not mean what the ghettos in U.S.A. mean, necessarily. Here’s one example of what happened in Krakow, Poland that also happened ALL OVER EUROPE…. Hitler cleared an area of Krakow of all the Polish citizens with no explanation. It was approximately a four-block area where approximately 3,000 Polish citizens had lived. Then, Hitler rounded-up all the Jews in the city and moved them into this one area – called the Jewish Ghetto. They put approximately 16,000 Jews in the same buildings where previously, 3,000 Polish citizens had lived. Hitler did this in all cities throughout Europe. There were SS police surrounding the ghettos so the Jewish people were not allowed to leave this area. The train tracks ran through the ghettos. Eventually the Jews were told they were being moved elsewhere so bring all their valuables to the ghetto square. The cattle cars arrived at night and all the Jews
Jewish restaurants
The former Krakow Jewish ghetto is now a tiny area with four restaurants, a synagogue, a memorial gravesite, and not much else. were rounded-up and taken to death camps. In Krakow, they were told to leave their valuables in the ghetto square and the SS stole their stuff and sold it right away. Hitler continued to move Jews throughout the surrounding areas of Krakow to this ghetto until he had finally killed 65,000 Jews from this area. This is how Hitler was so effective at killing 6 million Jews. He was an incredibly organized mass murderer, sadly. Today, there are only approximately 100 Jews that live in Krakow – a city of almost 1 million!! There are a total of approximately 600 people who say they have some Jewish heritage. We were able to walk on the street where Schindler’s List was made which is in Krakow’s Jewish ghetto, see the building where this took place, and the synagogue – this entire area is frequently in the movie. The movie was filmed here for three months. They made NO CHANGES to the area except they had to remove the TV satellites and the antennas that had since sprouted-up on the buildings since the 1940s. The people living here now gladly went without TV for three months because they wanted the story to
Krakow Jewish Ghettos
Hitler said "four people for every window" in each apartment be told. Do you know how Schindler’s List came about?? The author was staying at a hotel and he had something that needed mended. The hotel sent him across the street to a shop to have it mended and while he was talking to the shop owner, he told the shop owner he was an author. The shop owner told him: “I have a story for you.” The shop owner was one of the Jewish men saved by Schindler. Schindler, by the way, saved the lives of approximately 1,200 Jews.
From the Jewish ghetto we drove around Krakow and heard some facts and info. We were taken to the old town square and then they were planning to walk around doing this or doing that and seeing more cathedrals and Kamie & I wanted to go off on our own so we did. We walked down through the entire old town and to the central market. Great place to find original, Made in Polandia, souvenirs and such. If I had room in our suitcase and money to burn, they had the most beautiful blue and white cake tray! The market was full of goodies! We finally left
65 iron chairs
These heavy iron chairs are all set permanently in the former square of the Krakow Jewish Ghetto... symbolic of the 65,000 lives that were sent from this square off in cattle cars to death camps. the central market, took advantage of another beautiful and sunny day, and walked back to our hotel.
This afternoon we left early and went to a town around 45 minutes away to go underground and tour the world’s most famous salt mines. Sounds odd, huh? Well, it is fairly amazing. These were real working mines up until 1996. It is now a museum with sculptures and entire scenes all carved out of salt! We walked 135 meters down – approximately 400 steps – and then we took a teeny tiny shaft elevator back up to daylight. We walked 1.2 miles through the mines while we were down there and yet we apparently only saw less than 1% of the full mine. It has approximately 255 miles of paths and trails underground. I was freaked-out about doing this excursion and I assure you, you cannot do it if you can’t walk stairs and you are afraid of the dark or small spaces… but it was pretty cool to see everything and hear the stories. It felt nice to get back up to land again but it was a neat experience.
We had a group dinner
Krakow's Vistula River
Krakow used to have so much water it was called the Venice of the East at a restaurant next to the mine. We all had mushroom soup in oddly shaped bread bowls (it was delish), stuffed cabbage rolls and finally, mashed potatoes (they were terrible). The cabbage rolls were fantastic but it was all too much food. I didn’t even eat half of mine. I did eat over half of our apple pie with crumb crust and ice cream we all had for dessert! Yummo! We walked over 5 miles today per several people’s Fitbits and steps counters.
PS – We have been reading all of your comments and we are laughing and laughing.... except the sad ones about the camps, of course.
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Stacy
non-member comment
Stupid question: Do people ever sit in the chairs?