It wouldn't be too much to suggest that a film director generally famed for making movies about sharks, aliens and dinosaurs has done more to raise awareness for the Holocaust than any other figure in popular culture. Steven Spielberg's epic 'Schindler's List' is now famed worldwide, and this summer the director was awarded Cracow's most prestigous honour for his efforts to help preserve the city's wartime heritage. Spielberg gave a generous sum to help resurrect the 'Under the Eagle Pharmacy', a former bastion of resistance owned by Polish chemist Tadeusz Pankiewicz, the only gentile who managed to remain in the Nazis' Jewish Ghetto.
This June it was confirmed that the very factory that lies at the heart of the Schindler odyssey - a former crockery enterprise in the rundown Podgorze district - will also be transformed into a museum.
Whatever the historical and artistic merits of Spielberg's well-intentioned film, and in Poland it was Polanski's 'The Pianist' that was better received (Polanski, an actual escapee from Cracow's Ghetto, declined to shoot Spielberg's film, yet critics later felt he painted a more authentic picture of occupied Poland) the achievement of the real Oskar Schindler is in no doubt. This opportunistic yet famously affable profiteer saved over a thousand Jewish victims from an unequivocal fate, risking his own life in the process.
The actual Schindler factory is to be found in a shoddy, no-mans-land stretch of Cracow that you wouldn't advise gentle souls to explore after dusk. Currently the factory holds a small printing works, but many of its rooms are simply deserted.
The museum will include an exposition about the historical legacy of the factory, with a focus on Mr. Schindler himself. President of Cracow Jacek Majchrowski believes that besides providing a tribute to the building's extraordinary legacy, the museum will also help to regenerate the surrounding area.
However, there are potential problems. The factory is a vast space and the lion's share of the complex is due to become Cracow's major museum of contemporary art. On the face of it this sounds like a marvellous concept. After all, Cracow -Poland's cultural capital - has sorely lacked an expansive arena for contemporary art ever since 'contemporary art' came into being.
Yet at the same time, it is hard to imagine that any serious international museum of contemporary art - and this is what the museum aims to be - will not be inclined to seek what is 'hot' or cutting edge if the place wants to fulfil its function, let alone be a leader in its field.
Given that a not inconsiderable amount of contemporary art - good or bad - veers into somewhat risque territory, it is not difficult to see problems on the horizon for a building that is so inextricably associated with Holocaust martyrology. One cultural commentator remarked that owing to the nature of the building and of Cracow's reputation as a traditional, Catholic city, it was unlikely that the art on show would be of a grotesque or provocative nature. But this also seems to restrict the parameters of the museum to a huge extent, calling into question whether this is really the place for such an enterprise.
Yet on the other hand, perhaps unbounded freedom of artistic expression is in fact absolutely fitting for this building. After all, the Nazis themselves were censoring and banning art on an epic scale, from jazz music to so-called decadent painting. Perhaps, indeed, an open policy is precisely what this building needs, and if that means a few dirty artists beds, pickled farm animals and raunchy images from time to time then so be it. This would be a fine riposte to Nazi policy.
Whilst local authorities are now bidding for EU money to help top up the 4 million zloty already allotted for the project from the city's own pockets, critics are hoping that a satisfactory solution can be found that will allow the new enterprise to shine in a way that does not offend those who are sensitive about the building's complicated legacy. Ever optimistic, City President Majchrowski believes that the complex will be inaugurated as early as this Autumn.
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