Pharmacy Under The Eagle

In 1909, Józef Pankiewicz established his pharmacy “Pod Orłem” that is “Under the Sign of the Eagle” in what at the time was the Free Town of Podgórze, on the corner of ul. Targowa and Zgody (today’s Bohaterów Getta) Square 18. From 1933 it was run by Józef’s son, Tadeusz Pankiewicz: a pharmacist and graduate of the Jagiellonian University. Little did he know that, together with his pharmacy, he was soon to make history.

During the second world war, the pharmacy found itself by chance in the very centre of the Jewish Ghetto established in Podgórze in 1941. Its owner – who now lived in the emergency room at the back – was the only non-Jew in the ghetto. Initially, the German authorities missed the fact, yet when the Ghetto’s only pharmacy began providing a service at night, his presence there was unofficially approved. In his work, Pankiewicz was assisted by three trusted lady pharmacists who needed special permits to come to work at the pharmacy.

The pharmacy operated until the tragic liquidation of the Ghetto in March 1943, helping and frequently saving the lives its residents. It offered room for clandestine meetings, and was at the same time the contact point where food and medications were brought into the ghetto and presented to its inhabitants. Finally this was where shelter was provided and false documents arranged.

In recognition of his deeds, Tadeusz Pankiewicz was bestowed with the medal of the Righteous among the Nations after the war, and the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Poland Reborn (Polonia Restituta). Pankiewicz collated his memories in a book entitled Apteka w getcie krakowskim, published for the first time in 1947 (published in English as The Cracow Ghetto Pharmacy, by the Holocaust Library in 1987). After the nationalisation of the pharmacy in 1951, when it became simply the pharmacy operating under the official number 31, Pankiewicz quickly moved elsewhere. He died in Kraków in 1993, and in his last journey was accompanied by a 40-person-strong group of visitors from Israel.

In 1967 the Communist authorities closed down the pharmacy and destroyed its historic furnishing, turning it into a beer bar. It was not until 1983, that a permanent exhibition on the Ghetto and Martyrdom of Jews was organised in its reconstructed interior. The museum received financial support from Roman Polański, Steven Spielberg, and others.