Schindler's Factory Museum

Museum in Oskar Schindler's wartime enamelware factory in Zabłocie, documenting occupied Kraków

The Oskar Schindler Enamelware Factory stands in the Zablocie district on the eastern edge of Kazimierz, and the museum it now houses is one of the finest historical museums in Poland. The permanent exhibition — "Krakow Under Nazi Occupation 1939-1945" — tells the story of the German occupation and the systematic destruction of Krakow's Jewish community, using the factory's original spaces, carefully preserved or restored, as its setting.

The museum's strength is its personal scale. Rather than presenting abstract statistics, it uses individual stories, salvaged objects, reconstructed interiors, and documentary material to show what occupation meant day by day for the city's residents — Jewish and non-Jewish alike. The room that recreates the Schindler factory floor in operation is particularly effective. Plan at least two hours; the exhibition is extensive and emotionally demanding. Book tickets online — the museum sells out regularly and the queues for walk-in tickets can be very long.

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A story
Oskar Schindler was not a hero by instinct. He came to Krakow as a war profiteer, using Jewish forced labour to run his enamelware factory as cheaply as possible. The transformation came gradually — prompted partly by witness, partly by bribes, partly by relationships with the workers themselves. By 1945, he had spent his entire fortune buying Jewish lives. After the war, he died nearly penniless in West Germany. His factory workers, whom he always called "his Jews," supported him financially for the rest of his life.