I decided to read The Cracow Ghetto Pharmacy to be “prepared” for my trip to Cracow. And since you cannot decide to visit Cracow without diving at least a bit in its past, I think that this book, even if it’s surely not a light reading, MUST be read.
Tadeusz Pankiewicz is the owner of a small pharmacy located in Zgody Square, in a peripheral district of Cracow. When the Jewish ghetto was created on March 1941, Tadeusz Pankiewicz becomes a resident although he is not Jewish, and he decides to stay and keep his pharmacy open. He becomes a witness of Nazis brutality, a “reporter” and a silent rescuer. He assists to the death of hundreds of people and, without knowing it, he becomes an important person in the ghetto, helping people and saving numerous innocent lives.
“The heroic behaviour of this gentle pharmacist teaches us that the life of every person, even in a situation devastated by death, can still be considered the greatest gift we have been given to”.
This book is both historical, biographical, narrative, descriptive and extremely engaging. While not describing the entire city of Cracow, but only the limited area of Zgody Square daily lived by the protagonist, the book is full of details, even the most macabre, which make the reading surely not light, but certainly interesting.
“These few examples prove what a strong hate can bring to, and how the human’s moral can commit so many vile acts”.
But, above all, the book describes with great accuracy the tragedy of a very precise historical moment: Tadeusz Pankiewicz, simply describing what he saw, his able with his words to let you see the same atrocities he attended. He will bring you there, in the back of his pharmacy in Zgody Square, to spy, hidden in the shadows, the crimes taking place just under his eyes.
“The Cracow Ghetto Pharmacy tells the absurdity of a historic moment in which the fate tantrum decided the destiny of many people, but also the incredible resilience of humans in front of horror. As a customer tells Pankiewicz: “Doctor tell me: how come there are so few crazy people after all that people had to endure? Can the gray cells in our brain hold so much pain?”
