Thursday, March 14, 2013

Kate Ann Gonta:Schindler's Factory


Yesterday, we ventured into the city of Krakow.  Krakow is a about an hour and 15 minutes away from Oswiecim.  While there, we toured Krakow under Nazi Occupation 1939-1945.  This museum offers the history of Krakow's population, both Polish and Jewish, of the Krakow factory of enameled vessels, of Oskar Schindler,and of the prisoners of Plaszow Concentration Camp he managed to save.

Oskar Schindler was a German entrepreneur who saved the lives of over a thousand Polish Jews employed at his factory in Krakow.  His story became famous when Steven Spielberg arrived in Krakow in March of 1993 to film Schindler’s List.

One thing that really stood out to me in the museum was the replica of the ghetto.  It was dark and the walls were designed like cemetery tombstones. I felt very unsettled.  Forcing the Jews out of them home and moving them to the ghetto was the Nazis first way of executing them.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, they took away their right to use public transportation and their right to attend school.  Their rooms that they had to stay in were so cramped, small, and dark.

As Alexander Donat explains in his memoir “The Holocaust Kingdom”, he describes how being sealed off from the rest of the world affected the Jewish people in the city of Warsaw. “When the ghetto was officially sealed off, a sociological ‘experiment’ without parallel began. Half a million people, locked behind walls in the heart of a great city, were increasingly isolated from the city and from the rest of the world… [with] the real purpose of the Warsaw ghetto… [being] to exterminate its inhabitants after robbing them of all their worldly goods” (26).

Even though this was just replica and wasn't even half the size of a real ghetto, it painted such a clearer picture for me.  It had pictures, facts and testimonies from Jews who went through this horrible displacement.  I think everyone who has a chance should go visit this museum.  It had facts from the before the war, to the end of the war, giving insight on very little detail of Krakow during this time.  Reading and watching movies is not enough, we need to experience it with our eyes and our being and learn from this and to never let this type of actions and hatred ever happen again.

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