Oskar Schindler's Enemel Factory

ul.Lipowa 4, 30-702 Kraków Phone: +48 122571017+48 122570095+48 122570096 http://www.mhk.pl

About

Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory – the new branch of the Historical Museum of the City of Kraków – is located in the post-industrial Zabłocie district of Kraków, at the administrative building of the former factory of enamelled vessels known as Oskar Schindler's Deutsche Emailwarenfabrik (DEF). Exhibition The former office building of the Deutsche Emailwarenfabrik now houses the exhibition entitled "Krakow under Nazi Occupation 1939–1945". The exhibition is primarily a story about Kraków and its inhabitants, both Polish and Jewish, during World War Two. It is also a story about Nazi Germans – the occupiers who arrived here on 6 September 1939, brutally disrupting Kraków's centuries-long history of Polish-Jewish relations. The great history of World War Two intersects here with everyday life, and the personal dramas of individual people overlap with the tragedy which affected the whole world.The wartime history of Deutsche Emailwarenfabrik – DEF – and its owner Oskar Schindler was brought into the limelight in 1993 by Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List. Ever since that time, tourists from all over the world have been coming to Lipowa Street to visit the place where Schindler saved the lives of over a thousand people. The character of Oskar Schindler and the life stories of the Kraków Jews he saved are presented in the exhibition as part of the city's complex wartime history. Oskar Schindler's heroic attitude is presented in close-up in his former office – luckily, the historic room located in the factory's administrative building has been preserved intact throughout the years. The dominant feature here is the symbolic "Survivors' Ark" made of thousands of enamelled pots, similar to those manufactured by Schindler's employees during the war. The new exhibition has been created with the use of various means that go beyond the framework of traditional museum exhibitions. The designers and creators of its artistic layout have given it the character of a theatrical, or cinematic narrative. The theatrical reconstructions of Kraków's historical city space are juxtaposed with sculptural installations metaphorically embracing the city's wartime history. The spectator voyeuristically wanders through the city: walking down the cobbled streets, s/he pops in at a photographer's shop, peeps into an authentic stereoscope which used to belong to a pre-war studio on Szczepańska St, boards a tram to watch a documentary portraying the everyday life of the city which is screened on the tram's windows, walks through the narrow, labyrinthine streets of the Ghetto to visit a typical Jewish apartment, and then moves to the Płaszów camp, together with the Ghetto residents. Looking though the windows of a hairdresser's salon s/he watches the Polish underground's attempt on the life of Wilhelm Koppe. A moment later, looking though the window of a gloomy basement, s/he witnesses a street round-up, and finally, trapped in the fortified city, s/he waits for the Red Army to arrive.
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