Bohaterów Getta Square

Laid out around 1838 as an ancillary market square for the Town of Podgórze, it was intended to combine trade and fair functions. Initially unnamed, it only started to operate as the Mały Rynek: the small market square, in the 1880s. After the district became part of Kraków in 1915, it received the name Zgody Square, as Kraków already had its own Small Market Square.

During the second world war, the square became the focal point of the ghetto for Jews which the Germans opened here on 3rd March 1941. The house at number 18 was the ghetto’s only pharmacy, run by Tadeusz Pankiewicz, the only non-Jewish Pole to live within the ghetto. Putting his life at stake, he assisted its residents, and was later a witness of the drama that took place during the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto on 13th and 14th March 1943.

After the war, the square received the name it bears today, which literally translates into “Square of the Heroes of the Ghetto”. Unfortunately, it became run-down: the pharmacy was replaced by a beer bar in 1967, and the centre of the square was taken over by an awkward coach station in the 1970s.

The first change for the better was the opening of the Museum of Remembrance in the former pharmacy (1983). Complete refurbishment of the square, drawing on its historical significance, was not, however, carried out until 2005. At that time, a special monument was installed here: a few tens of cast-iron chairs were laid out to stand on their own all over the square. The artist who designed it based it on the memories of Pankiewicz the pharmacist about the furniture, including chairs, that remained here after the liquidation of the ghetto.