A Walk around Krakow

Today we had booked a tour of Nowa Huta, a Soviet Model City built on the outskirts of Krakow, but it was cancelled by the company at the last minute (as in 20 minutes after we were supposed to have left). Not to let it ruin our day, we set off on foot to the centre, to go to Kazimierz. This is the back of Wawel Castle on the way. Also as extras are the statue / fountain to remember Chopin, and the oldest street in Krakow, which runs from the Castle to the main old town square. The church in the extras is about the monument in front, the Katyn Monument. In 1940, the Russians shot 20,000 Poles in Katyn. It was a complete massacre, but is one that I'd never heard about. I suspect that with the need to work with the Russians in the second world war, it was brushed under the carpet.

The picture extra is graffiti from Kazimierz, from the Jewish Quarter. King Kazimierz of Poland invited the Jews cast out from elsewhere in Europe to settle in Krakow, and the district was then named after him 500 years or so later, a population of 60,000 Jews were removed and placed into Podgroze, an industrial area across the Vistula, which contained what became the factory of Oskar Schindler. At the end of the war, only 3000 of those Jews survived - more than a third were the Schindler Jews.