Oskar Schindler’s Factory is a moving museum in central Krakow that is dedicated to communicating the plight of Jewish families during the Holocaust. Listen to radio excerpts announcing Nazi propaganda and imagine how it must have felt to be one of the Jewish workers in Oskar Schindler’s Factory in wartime Krakow. Read extracts from letters and diaries. Photographs and reconstructed scenes of daily life help to paint a vivid picture of what life would have been like for many families in Poland.
The Oskar Schindler Factory has been a museum since June 2010. The factory was made famous by the Oscar-winning Steven Spielberg film Schindler’s List. Businessman Oskar Schindler ran his enameled goods business here during World War II. The business made him a fortune and allowed him to save the lives of over 1,200 Jews by sending them to work. The museum focuses on Krakow under Nazi occupation.
Explore the factory by following a sign-posted route through the different exhibits. Peek into a hair salon or a typical apartment or see the kind of cramped quarters where families were sometimes forced to take shelter. Discover what life in the factory and the lives of its workers would have been like via several reconstructions, photos and first-hand descriptions. Visit Schindler’s office, where his desk sits before a large glass cabinet filled with enamel goods.
Watch a documentary and historical footage from the war in the museum’s large screening room. Many of the objects and areas in the factory are recognizable from the Hollywood movie.
The Oskar Schindler Factory is located in the industrial Zablocie district of Krakow. It is less than 2 miles (3 kilometres) southeast of the Old Town (Stare Miasto) area. There are bus and tram stops nearby. The museum is open daily, with shorter hours on Mondays. It’s closed on the first Monday of every month. There is a charge for entry.
