Pharmacy Under the Eagle: The Small Museum Most Visitors Miss

Pharmacy Under the Eagle is the small museum most visitors miss entirely, tucked on the edge of Ghetto Heroes Square and easy to walk past on the way to Schindler’s Factory. Marta explains who ran it, what it actually did during the occupation, and why the twenty or thirty minutes it takes to visit are worth building into your Podgórze itinerary.

Who Was Tadeusz Pankiewicz

Tadeusz Pankiewicz was a Polish Catholic pharmacist who owned and ran Apteka pod Orłem — the Pharmacy Under the Eagle — on what became Ghetto Heroes Square. When the Nazis established the Krakow ghetto in Podgórze in 1941, the pharmacy fell within its boundary. Unlike other Polish residents and business owners, Pankiewicz chose to remain inside the ghetto walls rather than relocate his pharmacy outside them, a decision that let him keep serving the Jewish community trapped there for the following two years.

What the Pharmacy Did During the Occupation

Beyond dispensing medicine, the pharmacy became a genuine point of quiet resistance. Pankiewicz and his staff used the shop to pass messages and information between the ghetto and the outside world, hide and shelter people during round-ups when possible, and provide medication and sedatives that helped some residents survive both illness and the psychological weight of the deportations. He also kept detailed notes throughout the period, later published as a memoir, which remains one of the most direct first-hand accounts of daily life inside the Krakow ghetto. For his actions, Pankiewicz was later recognized by Yad Vashem among the Righteous Among the Nations. His decision to stay was not without risk — Polish residents who assisted Jewish people under occupation faced severe punishment if discovered, and Pankiewicz operated under this threat for the full duration of the ghetto’s existence, not as a single act but as a sustained daily choice repeated over two years.

Inside the Museum Today

The museum occupies the actual pharmacy space, preserved and restored to reflect its wartime appearance — apothecary furniture, period bottles and equipment, and a small back room used for the pharmacy’s quieter, unofficial work. Displays combine artifacts with photographs and excerpts from Pankiewicz’s own writing, giving the space a personal, first-hand quality that’s different from the broader historical framing at Schindler’s Factory Museum nearby. It’s compact by design, usually taking visitors 20 to 30 minutes to see properly, and free to enter.

Why It’s Easy to Miss

The museum sits directly on Ghetto Heroes Square, surrounded by the square’s striking chair memorial, which tends to draw the eye and the camera far more than an unassuming pharmacy storefront at its edge. Many visitors walk the square, photograph the chairs, and continue on toward Schindler’s Factory without realizing there’s a small, free museum with genuine historical weight sitting a few steps away. It’s one of the more overlooked sites in Podgórze relative to how significant the history inside it actually is. Marta’s advice to visitors planning a Podgórze route: build the pharmacy into your plan deliberately rather than hoping to stumble across it, since it’s easy enough to miss even when you’re specifically looking for it among the square’s other, more visually dominant features.

How Long to Spend and When to Visit

Budget 20 to 30 minutes, which fits easily alongside a visit to Ghetto Heroes Square and the wider Podgórze ghetto sites. The museum has no timed-entry requirement and rarely sees the kind of queues that build up at Schindler’s Factory, so it works well as either a first stop before the busier sites or a quieter final stop at the end of a WWII-focused walk. Mid-morning to early afternoon tends to be the calmest window, though crowding is rarely a real concern here given how few visitors make it inside.

Pairing It with the Rest of Podgórze

The pharmacy works naturally into a route that also includes the ghetto wall fragment on Lwowska Street and Schindler’s Factory Museum, all within a short walk of each other. If you’re deciding how to structure the ticketed portion of your visit, Marta’s guide to booking Schindler’s Factory tickets covers timing for the museum that usually anchors the rest of the walk.

What Locals Notice

Guides who bring visitors through Podgórze regularly note that the pharmacy tends to produce a different kind of reaction than the square’s chair memorial — quieter, more personal, often the moment where a group’s questions shift from broad historical facts to specific curiosity about Pankiewicz himself. It’s a small space, but locals who know the district well will often say it’s the site that stays with visitors longest, precisely because it centers one ordinary person’s choices rather than the scale of the history around it.

Pankiewicz’s Own Account

Pankiewicz published his own memoir after the war, “The Cracow Ghetto Pharmacy,” documenting daily events inside the ghetto from a uniquely close vantage point — someone present throughout, but never confined the way residents were. The museum draws heavily on this text, and portions appear translated on display panels throughout the space. Reading even a short excerpt on-site adds a layer the artifacts alone don’t fully carry, since it puts specific dates and names to what otherwise might read as general historical background.

Combining It with a Guided Walk

If you’re taking a guided tour of the Podgórze ghetto sites, most itineraries include a stop at the pharmacy alongside Ghetto Heroes Square and Schindler’s Factory, since the three sites sit within a few minutes’ walk of each other. If you’re visiting Schindler’s Factory with a timed-entry ticket, the pharmacy makes a natural addition either before or after, adding minimal extra time to a route you’re already walking.

Accessibility Notes

The museum’s small footprint means it’s straightforward to navigate, with step-free access from the square into the main exhibition space, though the layout is tight in places given the building’s original footprint as a working pharmacy rather than a purpose-built museum. Staff are generally on hand and willing to answer questions beyond what’s on the panels, which is worth taking advantage of given how few visitors typically stop to ask.

Why This Site Matters Beyond Krakow

Pankiewicz’s story is often cited alongside other well-documented accounts of individual rescue and resistance during the Holocaust, but it holds a distinctive place because of how directly it was recorded — few other ghettos have a comparably detailed, contemporaneous written account from someone who chose to stay rather than one compiled entirely after the fact from survivor testimony. Historians researching daily life inside occupied ghettos regularly draw on his memoir specifically because of this immediacy, which is part of why the museum, small as it is, carries genuine scholarly weight beyond its role as a local memorial site. Several university courses on Holocaust history in Poland reference the memoir directly, and translated editions exist in multiple languages, making the museum’s on-site excerpts a genuine entry point into primary-source material rather than a secondary summary of events documented elsewhere.

What to Look for Inside

• Original apothecary furniture and equipment preserved from the pharmacy’s operating years.
• Photographs of Ghetto Heroes Square from the occupation period, shown alongside its current appearance.
• Translated excerpts from Pankiewicz’s memoir displayed throughout the exhibition.
• A small back room used for the pharmacy’s quieter, unofficial work during the occupation.

What to Read Next

• Schindler’s Factory and the Krakow Ghetto: WWII Sites and Tickets
• Schindler’s Factory Krakow: How to Book Timed-Entry Tickets

Frequently Asked Questions

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