The Pharmacy under the Eagle

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Type: Landmarks Price: Free District: Podgorze

The pharmacy ‘Under the Eagle’, located at Plac Bohaterow Getta (Ghetto Heroes’ Square) no. 18 is now a branch of the Historical Museum of Krakow, where the evidence of Nazi genocide performed on the Jewish inhabitants of Krakow is found. It’s a legendary and famous place, one of very few non-Jewish institutions located in a Jewish ghetto and an island of kindness amidst the hell of the Holocaust.

The pharmacy was founded and run by Tadeusz Pankiewicz, a Polish pharmacist, the only non-Jew living in the Krakow ghetto, who managed to convince Germans to allow the pharmacy to operate when the ghetto was created, and what’s extraordinary, to operate round the clock. Ever since the ghetto came into being, the pharmacy was a secret meeting point, where the elite met, the underground press was read and letters were exchanged (there was no post office in the ghetto).

Pankiewicz provided shelter for Jews during night arresting. The pharmacy had two exits: the official one on the corner and a spare, backyard one, which saved the lives of many people escaping to Jozefinska Street. The doctors and nurses who were displaced from the ghetto were given free medicine by Pankiewicz. Those who were displaced could also leave precious last messages for their families. The brave pharmacist also saved over a dozen valuable and old Torah scrolls, kept in a special safe.

Pankiewicz and his employees were mute witnesses to the numerous massacres done to the Jews at Plac Zgody (Concord Square), now Plac Bohaterów Getta (Ghetto Heroes’ Square). When the communists took over in 1950’s the pharmacy was turned into a low class bar and Pankiewicz himself moved into a different post. In 1983 a museum was opened in the former pharmacy due to efforts of Pankiewicz’s friends and war heroes, and in 2004 the interior was renewed and redecorated due to the efforts of Roman Polanski and Steven Spielberg.

In 1983 the state of Israel honored Tadeusz Pankiewicz with a medal of 'The Righteous Among the Nations'. He died 10 years later, November 5^th 1993 and is buried in Rakowicki Cemetery. His wartime memoirs describing the life in the ghetto have been translated into English by Henry Tills (‘The Cracow Ghetto pharmacy’, New York, Holocaust Library, 1987).