Museum of Modern Art in Oskar Schindler’s Enamel Factory
In the future this building will house the Museum of Modern Art in Kraków, designed by Claudio Nardi and Leonardo Maria Proli in a way enabling to combine the modern mass of the building from glass and concrete with the historical value of Schindler’s factory.
A new building will be added to the old factory buildings: it will offer about 4 thousand square meters of exhibition surface. There will be, among others, a cinema hall, a coffee house and bookstore.
Oskar Schindler’s Deutsche Emailwarenfabrik factory is a place visited by tourists from around the world. The story of its owner was brought into the limelight by Steven Spielberg in his 1993 “Schindler’s List” movie.
The former owner of the factory, Oscar Schindler, was honored by the Yad Vashem Institute with the title “Righteous Among the Nations” for saving Jews during the Second World War.
Schindlerwas born in 1908 in Zwittau in Moravia. After the German troops entered Kraków, Schindler moved to the Polish city and took over the former enamel factory “Rekord”, converting it into the Deutsche Emailwarenfabrik.
The factory also worked for the German munitions industry, which guaranteed its owner special privileges. Schindler employed more and more Jews by the year, saving them from death in concentration camps.
He also saved his workers during the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto and got them out from the camp in Płaszów.
In 1944 Schindler evacuated his employees to Brünnlitz in Moravia, where the factory functioned until the Red Army entered on May 8th, 1945.
Schindler, who saved over one thousand people, was awarded with the title “Righteous Among the Nations” in 1963. He died in 1974.
