Podgórze, on the south bank of the Vistula opposite Kazimierz, is where the German occupying authorities established the Krakow Ghetto in March 1941 — a fact that surprises many first-time visitors, who often assume the ghetto was in Kazimierz itself.
Establishing the Ghetto
Before the war, Podgórze was a working-class district with only a small Jewish population. In March 1941, German authorities forcibly relocated roughly 15,000–17,000 Jewish residents from Kazimierz and elsewhere in Krakow into a sealed area of Podgórze designed to hold a fraction of that number, creating severe overcrowding. The ghetto was enclosed with a wall, sections of which were built with curved, arched tops deliberately echoing the shape of Jewish tombstones (matzevot) — a detail widely understood as an intentional act of psychological cruelty.
Plac Zgody: From Deportation Square to Memorial
The ghetto's main square, then called Plac Zgody, was the staging point for the mass deportations that emptied the ghetto in stages during 1942, sending most residents to the Bełżec extermination camp. The ghetto was finally liquidated in March 1943, under the command of SS officer Amon Göth: those judged fit for labour were marched to the newly built Płaszów forced-labour camp nearby, while many others were killed during the liquidation itself.
Today the square — renamed Plac Bohaterów Getta, "Ghetto Heroes' Square" — holds one of Krakow's most striking memorials: 70 oversized bronze chairs, installed in 2005, standing empty across the square. They represent the furniture and belongings families were forced to abandon here, and the people who never returned for them.
The Eagle Pharmacy
On the edge of the square stood the Apteka pod Orłem — the Eagle Pharmacy — run throughout the ghetto's existence by a Polish Catholic pharmacist, Tadeusz Pankiewicz, one of the few non-Jews permitted to remain and work inside the ghetto walls. Pankiewicz used his position to smuggle food, medicine and information, and to quietly assist those inside; the pharmacy survives today as a moving small museum, a rare example of documented rescue and solidarity from within the ghetto itself.
Visiting Podgórze Today
A visit today typically includes Ghetto Heroes' Square and its chair memorial, the Eagle Pharmacy Museum, and the surviving fragment of the ghetto wall on ulica Lwowska — often combined with Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory Museum nearby in Zabłocie (see our visitor guide). Walking this route after Kazimierz, as in our Krakow & Jewish Heritage Private Walking Tour, traces the actual path of displacement — from the historic Jewish quarter to the ghetto that replaced it.
