Kazimierz had been home to the Krakow Jewish community for more than three centuries until 1941 - when the population was displaced by Nazi occupiers to the infamous ghetto in nearby Podgorze. To commemorate this tragic history the main square was renamed Ghetto Heroes Square -  famous for a sculptural installation of iron chairs to symbolise the furniture abandoned by its residents during the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943.

Many of those people ended up in Auschwitz Birkenau, a mere 70 kilometres or so from central Krakow. The vast expanse of this largest and most notorious death camp is now preserved as a museum and memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.