Going beyond the story of German industrialist Oskar Schindler who saved more than a thousand Jews during the Holocaust, the “Schindler’s Factory: Stories of a Place” event traces the fate of the factory, its Jewish workers and the surrounding district, from wartime occupation to the present day.
The exhibition opened to visitors on Friday at the former factory in Zabłocie, a district of Kraków that has undergone a dramatic transformation from an industrial centre into a hub of culture and services.
Schindler’s story became widely known through Thomas Keneally’s book Schindler’s Ark, later adapted by Steven Spielberg into the 1993 film Schindler’s List. The exhibition revisits that familiar narrative while exploring aspects of the history that extend beyond the screen.
“It is not only about Oskar Schindler saving the Jewish people who worked at the factory, but also about what happened to them after the war”, curator Bartosz Heksel told Poland’s PAP news agency.
Schindler arrived in German-occupied Kraków in 1940 and acquired a struggling enamelware and tinware business.
“He retained the factory’s former owners as employees, making the enterprise a continuation of the original company under a new name”, Heksel explained.
In 1943, a camp for Jewish workers was established behind the factory, housing several hundred prisoners. Although the enterprise served the German war effort, Schindler used his position to protect Jewish employees from deportation and death.
In 1944, as the German occupation forces retreated and the front moved closer, Schindler arranged for the factory’s operations and its Jewish workers to be transferred to Brünnlitz, in Moravia, then part of German-occupied Czechoslovakia. Production continued there until the arrival of the Red Army and the end of the war.
The new exhibition also focuses on the survivors who worked to preserve Schindler’s legacy after the war, alongside objects connected with their experiences.
Among the exhibits are a ring made by a Kraków jeweller who worked at the factory, enamelware produced at the site and props used in Spielberg’s film.
In 1963, Schindler was recognised as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust remembrance centre, in recognition of his efforts to save Jews during the Holocaust.
He died in Hildesheim, Germany, in 1974. In accordance with his wishes, he was buried in the Catholic cemetery on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.
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Source: PAP