Pomorska Street Memorial

- darkometer rating: 7 -

The site of the former Gestapo headquarters in Kraków, Poland, between 1939 and 1945 and now a memorial, consisting of a) an exhibition about that time plus the following years of Stalinist terror, and b) the original cells in which victims were held, who were also interrogated and tortured here. Hundreds of inscriptions left by those detained here survive to this day and are a key element of this memorial.

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>What there is to see

>Location

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More background info: The building that the present memorial is located in was constructed in the 1930s and named “Dom Śląski” or ‘Silesian House’, originally intended to house students/volunteers from that region.

After the beginning of the Nazi German occupation of Poland, the building was taken over by the Gestapo to serve as their Kraków HQ and also as a remand prison. For the latter end, parts of the basement were converted into holding cells.

Here the (mostly) political prisoners were incarcerated. Interrogations, which often involved brutal torture, usually took place upstairs. Hundreds were sentenced to death and the walls of the prison cells feature many an inscription left by those prisoners condemned to death. Some 400 of those often last words are still preserved today.

In 2011 the present memorial museum was opened. It consists of two parts: those prison cells with the original prisoners’ inscriptions on the walls as well a historical exhibition entitled “People of Kraków in Times of Terror 1939-1945-1956”, so also covering the period of Stalinist terror that followed the liberation of Poland and subsequent imposition of a communist regime by the Soviets.

The site is run by the Historial Museum of the City of Kraków as part of a “memory trail”, consisting, in addition to this exhibition, of the one at the Eagle Pharmacy in the former Jewish ghetto in Podgórze as well as the large museum inside the original Schindler factory.

What there is to see: When you get to the address you first encounter a memorial monument involving a bas-relief and a barred window with wreaths attached on the outer facade of the building. In the passageway leading into the courtyard there are large panels with portrait photos as well as mugshots taken by the Nazis of several dozens of victims; some come with short biographical notes.

In the courtyard are the entrances to a) the prison cells part just round the corner and b), in the far corner, that to the exhibition, down some steps (in both cases).

The anteroom to the exhibition has not only the ticket desk but also a multimedia presentation screen with information about the building, the Silesian House (see above) and its historical context before WWII.

The main exhibition proper then kicks off with a section about the Gestapo, first in Germany then in Poland and especially Kraków.

All texts and labels, incidentally, are bilingual, in Polish and with good translations into English.

Set into the floor are significant years, beginning with 1939 (and ending with 1956 later) along a line that outlines the route to be taken through the exhibition.

A replica border barrier at the beginning symbolizes the dismantling of such a border barrier as the first act of the German Wehrmacht invading Polish territory, as captured in one of the most famous images from that time.

The next section is about the first public executions carried out by the Germans on 10 September 1939, only five days after the Nazis had entered Kraków.

After a short interlude about various prisons where detainees were held, the topic of executions is resumed. A stark exhibit is a series of nooses hanging from the ceiling above a wooden wall with little hatches in it. If you open the hatches you get to see black-and-white photos of executions by hanging, with several bodies dangling from the gallows in each of these photos. If that’s too graphic for you then you have the option of not opening the hatches to take look.

In the far corner is a reconstruction of an interrogation room. An opening in the desk’s top reveals some objects such as a gas mask and a pistol. A cupboard next to the desk contains more objects, presumably items confiscated from prisoners, including a book (a copy of “Die Wehrmacht”, apparently) with a cut-out in the shape of a pistol, which was thus concealed from view in order to be smuggled.

Throughout the exhibition individual stories of victims, as well as occasionally perpetrators, are presented on text panels. At the far wall, the panel outside (see above) is echoed again by means of another wall of mugshots of concentration-camp inmates who came from Kraków, and here a specimen of those typical striped camp jackets is added.

The next section gets back to the topic of executions, now focusing on the very last one carried out by the Nazis in January 1945, so shortly before the Germans withdrew from the city.

Next to this is an archive, where you could pick folders from some shelves to study individual cases in depth – and in large numbers. This really is for specialists only. The data can also be found online, so you wouldn’t have to do this here anyway.

Incidentally, the exhibition also features four interactive workstations where more info can be found on screens. I’m not a huge fan of exhibitions relying on visitors working their way through info on screens (I do too much of that at home already), but at least here it’s just an optional add-on and far less dominating a feature than at the related Eagle Pharmacy exhibition.

The exhibition then enters the post-war era and with it Stalinism. Now members of the Polish resistance, which had been loyal to the Polish government in exile, became targets of the NKVD (precursor of the KGB) and Poland’s own security police the UB (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa) working for the communist regime that was imposed on the country by the Soviet Union. Many surviving former resistance fighters were sent to gulags deep inside the USSR. One exhibit here is a pole with several road signs on it giving the names of places in Russia together with the distances to them. One infamous name here is Vorkuta.

One section focuses on the story of General “Nil”, real name August Emil Fieldorf, who was deputy commander of the AK (the ‘Home Army’ of the Polish resistance in WWII). After the war he was arrested by the NKVD and executed in 1953.

In a corner is an exhibit about show trials, involving a wooden structure resembling a courtroom dock with blow-up black-and-white photos of such a trial surrounding it. On display next to it is a prison cell door.

Finally we get to the phase of 1953-1956, i.e. the years following the death of Stalin. In Poland the grip of the regime was slowly loosened somewhat, and on 1 October a new Polish government was formed under the reformer Władysław Gomułka. An early move was an amnesty for political prisoners. This may have ended the very bloodiest phase of repression and persecution in communist Poland, but of course, as we all know, it was far from over completely; and communist rule (with surveillance, censorship, repression and arrests) was to last until the late 1980s.

Back at the ticket desk a museum employee then grabbed a key and took me to the entrance to the prison cells I had already passed on my way to the exhibition and opened it for me. Theoretically, if you want to see just those cells, you can ask to be taken there and entry is free of charge. However I can barely imagine anybody wanting to come here only to see the cells and giving the associated exhibition a miss altogether. But maybe it does happen …

In the small cell block you can see a number of original cell doors and some empty cells, some with glass floors and some information panels. These tell about individual prisoners and also explain some of the inscriptions and drawing scratched on to the cell walls by people held here. These original relics are the most prized component of this site. Most are in Polish only, so you are reliant on the translations on the text panels (which don’t cover every single one of the inscriptions). Many are goodbye notes before executions. One note I found was in Latin – and I recalled it from a Wilfred Owen poem, though it actually goes back to the Roman poet Horace: “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” – a patriotic line claiming it’s “sweet and fitting” to die for one’s country. In this instance this may have been scribbled in defiance. But at least in Owen’s poem the line is debunked as “the old Lie” ...

All in all, I found this exhibition better than that at the Eagle Pharmacy, but it too is a bit “overworked” in my view, with lots of detailed text that for many, especially international visitors can easily be overwhelming. On the other hand you don’t have to open any drawers – just those hatches in the execution section, which you can opt out of – and there are plenty of intriguing artefacts. So it’s worth integrating Pomorska Street into any in-depth exploration of Kraków’s dark-tourism offerings.

Location: at No 2, Pomorska Street, 30039 Kraków, less than a mile (1.5 km) to the north-west from the central Rynek Główny square

Google Maps locator: [50.0708, 19.9248]

Access and costs: a little bit out of the centre, but still walkable; not expensive.

Details: To get to the site you could walk it, it’s about 20 minutes from the Rynek Glówny square in the heart of Kraków, along Karmelicka and then Plac Inwalidów. For part of the way you could also hop on a tram (line 4, 8 or13) for two stops.

Opening times: Tuesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; closed on Mondays and several individual dates (better check the website of muzeumkrakova for details). Last admission 30 minutes before closing time.

Admission to the holding cells is free of charge, but the exhibition charges an entry fee of 18 PLN, except on Tuesdays, when this too is free.

A combination ticket covering all three sites of the “memory trail” (i.e. this site as well as the Eagle Pharmacy and the Schindler factory) costs 47 PLN, as opposed to 72 PLN for the three tickets if purchased individually. And the ticket is valid for seven consecutive days from the date of purchase, so you can spread your visits out nicely.

Time required: I spent about 45 minutes at this site, but if you want to read everything on-site and especially if you also want to explore everything the interactive multimedia stations have to offer you will need significantly longer.

Combinations with other dark destinations: in general see under Kraków.

There’s nothing in the immediate vicinity but the most obvious thematic combinations are the other two sites that are part of the “memory trail” promoted by the Historical Museum of Kraków, i.e. the Eagle Pharmacy and especially the much larger exhibition inside the old Schindler factory, both located to the south in the Podgórze district. If you want to see all three, make sure to get a combination ticket (see above), but it still pans out cheaper than individual tickets even if you drop the Eagle Pharmacy.

Combinations with non-dark destinations: see under Kraków.