Pies Dżok, Kraków

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.