While most of Poland was razed to ground during WWII Kraków made it trough unscathed. It was even more surprising that as a former capital of Poland it should have been devastated by Nazis who wanted to erase all remnants of Polish culture on their newly acquired land. The article I link to below gives a perspective on how Kraków's salvage was possible. http://culture.pl/en/article/how-krakow-made-it-unscathed-through-wwii