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The Holocaust Survival Story in Under the Eagle Pharmacy

Strona główna
Polska
Kraków
The Holocaust Survival Story in Under the Eagle Pharmacy

At 17, my mother, during the Krakow ghetto roundup, rushed to hide in Under the Eagle Pharmacy, while her parents were sent to Belzec death camp.

This page preserves her story and honors Pharmacist Tadeusz Pankiewicz and his pharmacy, which saved many.

13/06/2026

Irena Halpern - Cinowiec and the Pharmacy

📍🦅 She knew the pharmacy before she needed it. She visited it weekly to bring medicines for her chronically sick mother, Lola Halpern.

📍🦅 This was not a place she discovered by chance.

Irena Halpern-Cinowiec knew the pharmacy before it became her refuge.

Like many Jews living in Kraków, my teen mother understood its unique position inside the Ghetto boundaries. Yet she knew it was operated by a non -Jewish pharmacist.

It was known as a place where help was possible.

That knowledge mattered when choices disappeared due to deportations.

📍🦅 The pharmacy was already part of her mental plan of survival.

📍🦅 This knowledge ☝️ became crucial in the minutes of total chaos in the square, during the June 1942 deportation from the ghetto. As a teen, she escaped from the long line of Jews marching towards the square by slipping away and finding refuge in the Pharmacy - a moment that SAVED her life! In this march, it was the last time she saw her parents and all her extended family.
Can you even imagine the risk to her, the Pharmacy, their immediate families... if she were caught?!!!

Forever, I'm thankful 🙏 to the righteous Among Nations (1983) Pharmacist Tadeusz Pankiewicz and Pharmacists Irena Droz'dzikowska 🛡️Helena Krywaniuk 🛡️and Aureila Danek- Czortkowa 🛡️ for my mother the chance to live and build new family 🙏.

Photo left :
Irena Halpern -Cinowiec 1925-2009 by the walls of the Kraków Ghetto. Private collection. This photograph was kept by her the entire war. She hid it under her long braided hair.

Photo right:

Tadeusz Pnkiewitz and Irena Halpern -Cinowiec. Haifa, Israel 1957.
PRivate collection.

10/06/2026

Why This Place Still Matters

📍🦅 Because memory needs a physical ADDRESS.

Polish: Plac Bohatero'w Getta 18 Krakow , Poland.

English : Eagle Pharmacy Museum (Pharmacy Under the The Eagle) Apteka Pod Orlem 18 Ghetto Heroes Square 30-547 Krakow, Poland .

Books can be closed.
Stories can fade over time.

But places remain!

The Pharmacy Still stands where lives lives were saved quietly, bravely, daily ! My teen mother Irena Halpern-Cinowiec is one is many who survived by hiding in the Pharmacy in June 1942.

To VISIT is to participate in REMEMBRANCE - not as a spectator , but as a WITNESS.

📍🦅 Pod Orlem Pharmacy is not only history, it is RESPONSIBILTY !
Purchase TICKETS or book a tour via Muzeumkrakowa.pl :
bilety.mhk.pl

Photos:

Top: Eagle Pharmacy Museum (Apteka Pod Orlem) , Krakow, Poland - source unknown / web image .

Left: Plac Bohatero'w Getta ("Ghetto Heroes Square") and Eagle Pharmacy, Krakow, Poland. source unknown / web image .

Right: Interior of the Eagle Pharmacy Museum (Apteka Pod Orlem) , Krakow, Poland. Museum of Krakow/ source unknown .

07/06/2026

Ordinary Objects, Extraordinary Meaning

📍A Spoon. A bottle. A drawer

Nothing here was ordinary during the war.

Simple objects were tools for survival, Conceealment, and care.
A drawer could hide supplies.
A shelf could mask forbidden aid.

📍🦅The Pharmacy Museum preserves these items - not as artifacts, but as witnesses.

🔍 Visit. Look closely.

Photos credit:

Left: WhichMuseum.com Apteka Pod Apteka Pod Orłem / Muzeum Krakowa . Eagle Pharmacy.

Right top: WhichMuseum.com featuring artifacts and Pharmacy equipment from the Eagle Pharmacy Museum in Krakow.

Right bottom: Interior construction of the Eagle Pharmacy Museum (Apteka Pod Orłem), Kraków, Poland.

"An ordinary pharmacy became an extraordinary refuge".

04/06/2026

Who Was Allowed To Enter

📍🦅 Not everyone could walk through the Pharmacy door.

Entry was dangerous.

Each visit risked inspection, questioning, arrest!

Yet people came - because the place meant help, not betrayal!
My teen mother Irena Halpern -Cinowiec came ... every week ...
to get medicines for her chronic seek mother Lola Halpern.

Trust was Lifesaving.

📍🦅Standing at the Pharmacy entrance today, Visitors realize: Crossing this threshold once meant COURAGE !

📍🦅 When you visit today, my mother Irena Halpern -Cinowiec ( 1925-2009) Story and photo, stands tall at the right corner shelf of the entrance door. Please take a moment .

📍🦅 A doorway with consequences .

My Mother Irena Halpern -Cinowiec . Personal collection of Photos.
With Pharmacist Tadeusz Pankiewicz in Haifa Israel 1957.

01/06/2026

The Counter that heard everything

📍🦅 This counter heard whispers history never recorded!

People spoke softly here - about hunger, fear, disappearances of loved ones, friends, neighbors' ...

About who had been taken.
About who might be next.

The Pharmacy became a place to exchange information. When speaking elsewhere meant DEATH!

These walls absorbed voices that had nowhere else to go.

📍🦅 They are still standing.

Book and recommendation to read :

Buried words: The Diary of Molly Appelbaum . By Molly Appelbaum
Publisher : The Azrieli Foundation and others 2017

A powerful story of young Jewish girl (12) in Poland, who secretly documented fear, loss, resistance, and daily life under N**i persecution. Her buried diary survived the Holocaust and became a voice for those who could no longer speak.

29/05/2026

Medicines as Resistance

📍A pill could save more than an illness - Medicine meant survival!
In the Kraków Ghetto, medicine didn't only treat illness. It could:

📍Provide sedatives to calm the panic during roundups
Painkillers eased suffering
Reduce visible signs of sickness or age
Help someone appear "fit for work" and avoid deportation
Preserve dignity, composure and life chances.

Every bottle dispensed here carried risk!

What looks like a pharmacy shelf today in your neighbourhood was once an act of Resistance!

💊 History hides in details!

🦅 When you visit the Pharmacy Museum, stand behind the counter across the entrance door... each quiet act was Resistance risk-taking.

Photo:

Tadeusz Pankiewicz " I followed my parents' example, which was that people should be treated with kindness, that we should see a brother in every human being, and that, if someone is in need, we have responsibilty to lend a helping hand"

Tadeusz Pankiewicz in a letter, 1964

Photo Credit left : Krakow Ghetto pharmacy, CIRCA 1941-1943 .
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum / Photographer
Irena Jarosin'ska.

Photo (Bottle) right : Irena Halpern -Cinowiec private collection .
Replica pharmacy bottle, Kraków circa 1980

27/05/2026

Inside a Place That Was Never Silent

📍🦅 Even at night this place was awake.

While the Krakow Ghetto Jews slept under fear, the Pharmacy lights often stayed on. Not for business - but for people who had nowhere to go.

🦅 The Under the Eagle (Pod Orlem ) Pharmacy Museum.

Behind the counter, decisions were made quitely:

Who could be helped tonight ?
Who needed medicine - or shelter - without being seen?

This was not a shop.

it was constant VIGIL !

Today visitors at the Under the Eagle Pharmacy Museum, stand in the same space - and feel that silence.

🛡️ Can you even imagine such a risky legit Pharmacy Place, inside the the Krakow Ghetto ?!

📍 🦅 VISIT. Stand Still. Listen 🙏

Photo:

Museum of Krakow - Eagle Pharmacy Museum (Apteka Pod Orlem) , Krakow Poland .
Museum restoration Photo of the interior of the Eagle Pharmacy .

24/05/2026

When paper failed, courage remained

Permits expired.
Permissions were revoked.
Stamps meant nothing during the Krakow Ghetto liquidations.

And yet - the pharmacy remained a place of help even when documents lost their power.
Because when paper fails, Only Human Choice Remains🛡️:

🛡️Tadeusz Pankiewicz -
🛡️ Irena Droz'dzikowska
🛡️ Helena Krywaniuk
🛡️ Aurelia Danek- Czortkowa

📍🦅 Visit the Under the Eagle Pharmacy museum 🙏 Walk through the space where COURAGE outlasted paperwork.

Thankful for the courage of the Pharmacy owner and employees 🙏 My teen mother Irena Halpern -Cinowiec survived . This page is honoring their courage and compassion !

What should we carry forward when Humanity rules collapse ?

Photo :

Tadeusz Pankiewicz standing outside the Under the Eagle Pharmacy ("Apteka Pod Orlem) . Source : Muzeum Krakowa, Apteka Pod Orlem collection . Photo from Circa 1980s.

22/05/2026

Medical legitimacy as protection

Illness terrified the occupiers - not out of compassion, but fear of chaos and contagion.

The fear gave the Pharmacy a form of protection to operate.

Medical legitimacy - white coats, prescriptions, clinical language - created a space where help could exist under the cover of necessity.

My teen mother Irena Halpern-Cinowiec was talking care of her chronic sick mother Lola Halpern. Her mother was not mobile.

My teen Mother visits to the Pharmacy, were weakly regular. She knew Pharmacist Tadeusz Pankiewicz and his three women Pharmacists. She trusted them!
🛡️ and she survived by hiding in there in June 1942

📍🦅 At Pod Orlem pharmacy medicine was not just healing - it was camouflage.

Have you ever seen professionalism used to protect something so fragile ? Many lives were saved under the Pharmacy professionalism 🙏✡️

Photo credit:

Top- Interior of the reconstructed Under the Eagle Pharmacy Museum (Apteka Pod Orlem) , Krakow Poland . Photo :Museum of Krakow.

Lower photo:

War time photograph of the staff of Under the Eagle Pharmacy in the Krakow Ghetto: Left to right: Irena Droz'dzikowska, Aurelia Danek- Czortkowa, Tadeusz pankiewicz, Helena Krywaniuk .
Source : Museum of Krakow . Eagle Pharmacy Archives .

18/05/2026

lists, registers, names

Names were written down constantly:

Who worked
Who received medicine
Who was allowed to be present

Lists are meant to control.

But the Pharmacy became a place where names were remembered as people, not numbers.

📍🦅 When visiting the Under the Eagle Pharmacy museum, think about those names that survived because someone cared enough to remember them.

Names survived: My teen mother, Irenna Halpern-Cinowiec.

Names remembered but not survived: My grandparents, Lola and Pinkus Halpern. They were sent to the Belzec death Camp in June 1942, from the Heroes' Square Krakow Ghetto deportation. They were ordinary customers of the Pharmacy 🦅.

That Day in June 1942, my teen Mother survived hiding in the Pharmacy. It was the last time she saw her parents.....

✡️Why do names matter so much in times of dehumanization?

Photos credit:

Upper- Jews during deportation/transport near cattle cars, Krakow, Poland, during 1942-1943. Yad Vashem Photo Archives, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Auschwitz -Birkenau State Museum Archives.

Lower - Forced relocation and deportation period of Jews in the Krakow Ghetto, showing families transporting belongings by wagon through the Ghetto streets. Yad Vashem Photo Archives, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Jewish Historical Institute (ZIH), Warsaw.

Adres

Plac Bohatero’w Getta 18
Kraków
30-547

Godziny Otwarcia

Środa	09:00 - 05:00
Czwartek	09:00 - 05:00
Piątek	09:00 - 05:00
Sobota	09:00 - 05:00
Niedziela	09:00 - 05:00

Strona Internetowa

https://muzeumkrakowa.pl/en/branches/eagle-pharmacy, https://bilety.mhk.pl/rezerwacja/wydarzenie.html?idl=3&%3Blang=e

Ostrzeżenia

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