Apteka Pod Orłem (Pharmacy) in former Jewish ghetto Podgórze, Cracow Poland

Last summer I wrote quite a bit about this museum. The pharmacy was incorporated into the ghetto during WWII and was a place of refuge and medications for the Jewish people of the ghetto, as well as a link to the world outside the ghetto because of the phamacist's connections. This summer I want to add a few new details about the place.

Here is a picture of the outside of the museum. It is on the corner in the Plac Bohaterów Getta in Podgórze.

Here is a photo as you enter the museum. It is set up like a pharmacy with the counter and medicines behind it.

The museum is set up with many drawers and cabinets to open to find out more information about the pharmacy and the ghetto.

In addition there are several multimedia stations where you can tap on a screen to see photos and learn more about individuals, organizations and events during WWII.

One exhibit case contained various drugs such as luminal and strychnine. Luminal was used to drug children in the ghetto when they needed to be transported from one location to another quickly and quietly. Not sure how they used strychnine. 

There was a back room used as a laboratory. Here medicines were made. The photo below is where these medicines were made - a glass cabinet supplied with electricity, water and gas plus an exhaust duct for ventilation.

The back door you can see around the corner of the cabinet was used as an escape route for many who lived in the ghetto and were being actively pursued by the Germans. It led out to a back area of the ghetto.

There used to be an "isolation hospital" (for people with infectious diseases) on Kopernika Street in the center of Cracow that served non Jews and Jews before the outbreak of WWII. When the war started, the Germans said that no Jews can be treated there anymore. One of the doctors at the hospital, Aleksander Bieberstein, left to start an isolation hospital for Jews at 30 Rękawka Street in Podgórze. It was incorporated into the ghetto. Later when the ghetto was reduced in size (during the process of liquidating the ghetto) the hospital was no longer in the ghetto. The hospital was then moved to Zgody Płac 3. This building no longer exists. (From what I remember Zgody Plac is now what they call Plac Bohaterów Getta. The pharmacy is located on Plac Bohaterów Getta.)

Dr. Aleksander Bieberstein wrote notes about his patients in the hospital. He saved them over a long period of time. They were "lost" (destroyed) at some point. He reconstructed the information and wrote a book about his patients. The book's title is "Zagłada Żydów w Krakowie" or "The Destruction of the Jews in Cracow", published in 1986. I asked about this book in a bookstore in Kazimierz, but they did not have it. It is too old. Maybe it would be in a rare book store.

In the "Duty Room" (the pharmacist's office) there is a display that includes information about Samuel Stöger, an owner of a mill in Podgórze. His brother was deported from the ghetto and was later killed. His wife and young son died during the liquidation of the ghetto. His family experienced tragic losses. In 1946 he was a witness in the trial of Amon Goeth, one of the most vicious SS leaders in Cracow.

I would recommend visiting this museum. It is not a huge one and only takes a few hours to see.

Be sure to catch the film with interviews of ghetto survivors (at a station with headphones).