Ghetto Heroes Square

In front of you is the square that until 1948 was called Plac Zgody, 'Concord Square'. In March 1941, the German district governor ordered a ghetto to be set up for Kraków's Jews here in Podgórze. Between 15,000 and 16,000 people were crammed into some 320 buildings that had previously housed around 3,000. In April the area was sealed off by a wall.

1The place of deportations

This square was one of the ghetto's entrances and the place where people were gathered before being marched to the station. Between late May and June 1942, thousands were deported to the Bełżec extermination camp; further deportations followed in October. On 13 and 14 March 1943, under the command of Amon Göth, the ghetto was liquidated: around 2,000 people were sent to the Płaszów camp, some 2,000 were killed in the streets and around 3,000 were deported to Auschwitz.

2The pharmacy and the chairs

At number 18 stood Tadeusz Pankiewicz's pharmacy, the only one inside the ghetto. Pankiewicz, who was not Jewish, kept working here and helped many residents; Yad Vashem recognised him as Righteous Among the Nations in 1983. In his memoir he described the furniture left abandoned on the square after the liquidation. That passage inspired the memorial by architects Piotr Lewicki and Kazimierz Łatak, installed in 2005: seventy empty chairs.

The chairs don't stand for anyone in particular: they stand for absence.

3What to look for

• The chairs, each facing a different way.
• The façade of the 'Pod Orłem' pharmacy, now a branch of the Museum of Kraków.
• The ghetto wall: about 300 metres away, at ul. Lwowska 27, a section survives with a plaque; its arched top recalls Jewish gravestones.