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Jazz ia a favorite music in Krakow and U Muniaka and his combo kept us
tapping to the beat.. We almost missed the door because all we saw were
the clothes!
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Churches abound and here in Mary Magdalene Square are two back to back. St
Peters and St. Pauls. Here we first saw the advertisement for a Vivaldi
Concert.
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The concert, put on by these young, wonderfully talented musicians filled
this tiny church. On the left the director and trumpet soloist. On the far
right the solo violinist who enthralled the audience of about 150.
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The strings, 1st, 2nd and 3rd chair; the cellist and the contrabass. Their
harmony, their union, their spirit, their music brought back my hope so
dampened by my visit to the concentration camps.
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In March of 1941, the Nazis who had invaded Poland in 1939, ordered all of
Krakow's 64000 Jews to move to the Podgorze district on the other side of
the river where they were walled in in a ghetto where it was expected they
would die from infections etc, and where they could more easly be used as
slave labor .There is not much left of the Krakow ghetto but this,
the Pharmacy Under the Eagles, now a museum keeps the
memories of the tragedy of its inhabitants and the courage of the non-Jewish Poles like
Tadeusz Pankiewicz and his staff in who kept the
pharmacy open and assisted the Jewish inhabitants in many ways including escape.
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Another non Jewish Pole who is better know to most Americans, Albert
Schindler, did his part in this his factory about 5 blocks from the square
on which the pharmacy stands and from which Jews were sent to work here.
Now an electrical components factory, it is not open to the public. Krakow
has a large, historic Jewish section, the Kazimierz from which its
inhabitants were forced to leave and an area which I want to come
back and see.
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