Ghetto Heroes Square and Podgorze

Ghetto Heroes Square (plac Bohaterow Getta) in Krakow's Podgorze district, south of the Vistula in Lesser Poland, was the main assembly point of the Krakow Ghetto established by the German occupiers in 1941. Residents were gathered here for deportation to the Belzec and Auschwitz camps and for forced labour. Today the square is a memorial space, marked by 70 large bronze and iron chairs, each representing about 1,000 victims, which stand scattered across the open paving in an installation known as the Empty Chairs memorial. The square is free and open around the clock. The Eagle Pharmacy museum stands on its edge, and the wider Podgorze area includes Rynek Podgorski, the district's market square with the neo-Romanesque St. Joseph's Church, cafes and shops, as well as a surviving fragment of the Ghetto Wall on ul. Lwowska with tombstone-shaped curves. Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory is a short walk away. A visit usually lasts about an hour including the square and the surrounding streets. Daytime is the usual time to come, with guided walking tours often arriving in the morning and at midday. The atmosphere is sombre, and visitors are expected to behave respectfully, avoiding sitting on the chairs for photographs or treating the site as a stage. Good places to view the installation as a whole are the edges of the square and the tram stop, where the chairs appear spread across the open space. The square is reached by tram to the Plac Bohaterow Getta stop, or on foot over the Father Bernatek footbridge from Kazimierz, and the ground is flat.