In August 1933 Roman Polański was born to a Polish Jews family in Paris.
Three years later the family moved back to Kraków, where in 1939 witnessed the outbreak of World War II.
When the Kraków Ghetto has been createn in 1941, they moved to the house of his grandmother in Podgórze district.
It was the narrow house of Rękawka street with some windows outgoing to the side of Rynek Podgórski and neighbour church of St. Joseph.
Before liquidation of the Ghetto in 1943 Roman Polański managed to escape, survived the war with the help of Polish Roman Catholic families.



His mother and 18-years old sister died in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, the father has been sent to Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria, and luckily survived.
After the War his father found Roman and both returned to Kraków, where Polański finished Art School to enter the National Film School in Lodz, where he directed his first movies.

The Holocaust personal memories from Krakow influenced his Oscar awarded movie 'The Pianist' with Adrien Brody.
The film tells the War story of Jewish-Polish musician Władysław Szpilman, who witnessed the rise and fall of Uprising in Warsaw Ghetto, and after the war became the pianist in Polish National Orchestra.

Roman Polański has visited Kraków several times recently, and donated quite a sum for renovation and development of National Museum Exhibition in the 'Apteka Pod Orłem' house, where during the Ghetto existence the doctor Tadeusz Pankiewicz run his pharmacy helping numbers of Jews to escape Holocaust.

[On photo: house of Polański's grandmother at Rękawka Street, Podgórze, Kraków]

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