BASIC HISTORY OF OSCAR SCHINDLER: DUDE (not a great man, just a man) WHO WANTED TO MAKE A CRAPTON OF MONEY OFF CHEAP LABOR IN WWII MOVES TO NAZI-OCCUPIED POLAND AND STARTS UP A FACTORY TO PROFIT OFF CHEAP LABOR. Then. as the war goes on, he eventually brings more Jews into his factory, and ends up building a better-conditions ghetto for them, and also ends up keeping them alive. He evacuated them, towards the end of the war, and many of the staff's families, and kept them safe. So he was a regular man who did a great thing.
Watch Schindler's List.
One of the first parts of the museum included a section on what Poland was like fo rthe Germans, including a lot of the atrocities the SS would pull, including stuff like transporting 7 (i think intelligensia?) Poles to be publicly executed, where the Soldiers made the jews not only actually hang the men, but also bury them. Apparently the Nazis would run around taking pictures to use in their Propaganda. Also it had a repro display of one of the cells that they'd house people in and torture them. Next to this display in a tiny alcove was "A box made from human skin" and when i went to peak in (which i wasn't originally even going to do, except that i kept thinking of the Necronomicon and got curious) it looked so much like normal brown leather it made me feel sick and i had to immediately work not to start breaking down into sobs; i just couldn't take any more pictures.
across from this were some of the photos taken of the 7 men from that first public execution. Hanged.
There were also some repros of panzer tanks and the guns attached and the guide we had was like "maybe the boys will know what i'm talking about" and i got insulted, but said nothing. There were also some amazing displays of life-size photos and explanations, and then when you looked below, there were jutted-out cabinet displays of the artifacts used by people. Coins, medals, dolls, letters, clothes, stamps, and guns.
In this room, every single tile is a white square with a black swastika, and it's both alarming and uncomfortable, but then you realize people are WALKING on it, so maybe it's supposed to be symbolic of triumph and not letting such a legacy rise up again. The guide explained only that during nazi occupation, swastikas were like the flag; never to be on the ground or below someone's feet. and also that the tiles were made especially for this museum.
one part of the museum is very dark and is made of a stone floor and a broken brick ceiling. The ceiling is meant to symbolize the lack of hope of the jews of escape, and the walls are repro ghetto walls. I can't really describe the shape very well, except maybe to say that they were long rectangles with semicircles at the top.
Like so (this is the last section of the Krakow ghetto wall). but as a dark, narrow hallway, in a building. These are the shapes that Jewish gravestones take. This fence/wall went all the way around the ghetto, and they made the Jews build it. (of course). in the museum, this part is hot and suffocating and claustrophobic.
Only a small part of the building is actually Dedicated to Oscar Schindler, where they kept the original files, one of the desks, the floors, and some of the pots made. the floors are incredibly loud, especially if you get a lot of people in their at once, because the wood is old and it squeaks a LOT. in his office, there is a hollow column that you can walk through that is silver (like the metal of the factory) and painted with lists of the names of people saved by Schindler. About eye level (i'm 5'10") or a little higher, on the right, as you exit through the tube, you see five people with the last name "Katz" Or, anyway, i did. and it struck me that he saved an entire family. Each one of those names was a person. and those were a family.
After exiting those rooms, there are examples of propaganda on the walls. Gross caricatures of soviets gabbingbup women and jews bentnover money and transactions. We were moving too fast to get a good look at them, but back home we should fucking change the redskins and the chiefs to something else. Goddamn.
The museum is in chronological order, and also has multimedia displays, and is crowded, but our guide was loud enough to be heard, and (though we picked up 2 or 3 people as we went), we were half the size of the group from the underground tour. As you exit the museum, you stop in a white room with bits of text in 6 different languages. Polish, English, Russian, German, Hebrew, and I think the last one must have been Czech, or something. Of course, all I could read were the snippets of english, and there are also spinning pillars (the last spinning pillars we saw were in the German part, so it was really interesting symmetry there) with these snippets of story.
the room smells like crayons, because if you touch the walls, they're warm. They are coated in wax, so that you realize that these stories are living, and made up of humanity, and as you walk out towards the exit, there are portraits hung up of the jews saved by Oscar Schindler, and you learn that the way he survived for the rest of his days was through the money given him by those same saved Jews.
the speech of the gestapo in Jagiellonian when they closed it down.
death poster with a list of names of people to be executed.
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