Pies Dżok, Kraków

Pies Dżok is a small riverside memorial on Czerwieński Boulevard, near Wawel Castle and the Grunwald Bridge. Bronisław Chromy’s sculpture shows the dog Dżok sheltered by open human hands, honouring his year of waiting for his deceased owner and the bond between animals and people.

On Czerwieński Boulevard by the Vistula, close to Wawel Castle and the Grunwald Bridge, this small sculpture commemorates Dżok, a black mixed-breed dog. The dog sits within a pair of open human hands, with his left paw reaching outward. Bronisław Chromy designed that image as a tribute both to a dog’s faithfulness and to the relationship between people and animals.

In October nineteen ninety, Dżok’s owner suffered a fatal heart attack near Rondo Grunwaldzkie. Dżok remained there, waiting for him. Kraków residents brought him food, and after about a year he accepted a home with Maria Müller.

When she died in April nineteen ninety-eight, he ran away and was later killed by a train in the railway district. The city’s residents, animal-welfare groups, public figures, and Kraków-based media all helped bring this memorial into being. It was unveiled on the twenty-sixth of May two thousand one, in an unusually fitting ceremony: a German shepherd named Kety pulled away the covering with her teeth. The little outstretched paw makes this a remarkably direct memorial to a bond that lasted beyond abandonment.