Given the proliferation of public squares in contemporary cities, but given also the gradual atrophy of their social role, their success can no longer be exclusively associated with how they were formed, nor with what they contain, but, first of all, with what happens inside them. Its life should come first, be it an extremely dinamic square, with shops and lively commerce, a quiet place, inviting to contemplation, or a place to meet friends and find out the latest news, a place for social and political debates, or just a space that has all these functions, at different hours of a day. This interactive dimension has even deeper meanings and challenges when the place is and ethnic and commemorative one, like in the case of new Bohaterow Getta Square (ex-Zgody Square) in Krakow.
The remodellation of Zgody Square by the Polish architects Piotr Lewicki and Kazimierz Latak managed to recuperate the intense ethnic memory of the place, but in the same time to create a powerful and liveable new public space for the city.
Short history of the place
Zgody Square is a historical place in the city, loaded with painful memories, reminding of the extermination of Jews in World War II. On March 3, 1941, the German authorities closed off a great part of the Podgorze district, in order to transform it in a ghetto for the Jews in the city; in the beginning, 17.000 Jews were relocated here. Taking up an area of 20 hectares, the ghetto streched from Zgody Square to Rekawka Street and between Lwoswska Street and Wegierska Street. It was sealed off from the city with a high wall and strategically situated next to an industrial district, with many plants, including the now famous “Schindler’s factory”.
Also the Plaszow concentration camp was near by, while the adjoining Zablocie train station facilitated future deportations. On May 30, 1942, for instance, the ghetto dwellers without identity cards where rounded up in Zgody Square and more than 4.000 of them left for the Belzec death camp.
The tragic ethnic memory of the place had to be integrated and “told” by the vast project of remodelling the square. Also, supporting the project, the old pharmacy in Zgody Square (owned by a man that helped a lot the Jews in the area during World War II) was turned into a museum of the Holocaust.
Urban solution
This urban project has the quality that it does not assign any use to the space, allowing passers-by and visitors to interact with the site and feel its memories, but also to add new ones. Even the commemorative dimension is high, the square represents a dynamic, functional and modern public area.
Seeing archival films and photos, reading memoirs of those who survived the Holocaust, the architects interpreted the history of the Krakow Ghetto as a sequence of movements, that capture a drama: a column of miserable human beings marching along the pavement, each with a stool over his heads; a girl crossing the street has a chair with its backrest down in her hands.
The architects knew that after the nazis liquidated the Ghetto, Zgody Square was full of useless things, a meaningful trace of the absence of their owners: wardrobes, tables, sideboards and other furniture have been abandoned; they have been moved from one place to another no one knows how many times now.
All this information generated a story that streches over the entire surface of the square, while the simple process of “defamiliarization” brings out objects stripped of their everyday practical functions: chairs, a well with a pump, rubbish bins, tram stops shelters, bicycle racks and even traffic signs.
The materials used symbolize the pass of time and they are very simple, almost humble: patinated bronze, corroded cast iron, paving blocks of grey syenite and ordinary concrete.
The Polish architects created a symbolical discourse that turns the square into the site’s memory, making visible that which could not be seen anymore, compensating for the irremediable absence of essential facts and things.
Uses, social life and symbolic meanings
Observing directly the daily life of the square, I will try to draw some conclusions regarding the following issues:
- how people interact with the new urban elements (and also the perspective of the tourists)
- the correlation between social identity and the activities in the square
- the relation of the square with the Kazimierz and Podgorze areas (with Jewish communities)
- the patterns in using the public space
- the presence of Jewish symbols and the way people react to them
- the presence of Jewish community in the square
In the end, I will try to compare the Zgody Square with some other european public squares with a powerful ethnic dimension in order to see the impact of the ethnic memory on contemporary urban life.
Note: the images were provided by the architect Piotr Lewicki.
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