Pharmacy Under
the Eagle Museum

The Pharmacy Under the Eagle operated throughout the existence of the Kraków Ghetto (1941–1943) — the only pharmacy allowed to remain open within its walls. Located on the corner of what is today Ghetto Heroes Square (then Zgody Square), it stood directly opposite the German police post. Its continued operation was possible because its owner, Tadeusz Pankiewicz, was an ethnic Pole who had owned the pharmacy before the ghetto was established. When the area was sealed off in March 1941, he was offered relocation — but chose to stay, fully aware of the danger.

Inside, Pankiewicz and his small team of assistants — Irena Drozdzikowska, Helena Krywaniuk, and Aurelia Danek — offered far more than medicine. The pharmacy became a discreet refuge during German round-ups and raids. People hid among the shelves, sometimes with their children, while Pankiewicz risked his life to provide sleeping draughts or tranquilizers to quiet frightened children and the elderly so they would not be discovered.

Because the staff were among the few non-Jews allowed to cross the ghetto walls, the women used this privilege to smuggle in food, letters, and essential supplies, and to carry out information and photographs documenting the atrocities. The pharmacy also became an informal communication hub, a place where news from the outside world could reach the trapped residents.

Amidst the despair, it offered something even rarer — a sense of dignity and compassion. Pankiewicz often recalled how people came not only for medicine but for a moment of conversation, a human word, or silent understanding.

When the ghetto was liquidated in March 1943, Pankiewicz witnessed the mass deportations and executions directly from his windows on the square. After the war, he recorded his memories in the book The Kraków Ghetto Pharmacy (Apteka w getcie krakowskim), a moving and detailed testimony that remains one of the most important firsthand accounts of the Holocaust in Kraków.