"Jewish Life in Kraków and Kazimierz" is a documentary produced for the CENTROPA Summer Academy 2021 by Sky Heritage Pictures and Tomasz Cebulski. The film offers a historical narrative on Jewish life in Cracow and Kazimierz prior to and after the Holocaust. It is in the form of a short guided tour through the most important surviving Jewish sites. Kazimierz is a globally unique, coherently surviving medieval Jewish district with seven synagogues, two Jewish cemeteries, multiple prayer houses, and most importantly, a contemporary existing and thriving Jewish community and its institutions. The camera and narrative guide the viewer through the Old synagogue, Remah synagogue and cemetery, Temple synagogue, and Kupa synagogue. The film offers a unique vantage point on Kazimierz and Cracow by using drone film footage enriched by historical films and pictures from before 1939.
The middle section of the film tells the story of Holocaust survivor Teofila Silberring by showing the sites connected to her childhood and survival in Cracow during the Second World War.
The film is narrated by Tomasz Cebulski Ph.D. and contains interviews with historian prof. Edyta Gawron and the director of Galicia Jewish Museum, Jakub Nowakowski.
The film provides an excellent introduction to the history of Cracow Jewry and should be used in the classroom as teaching material for grasping the context of local Jewish history in relation to historical landmarks and sites of memory.
