Krakow :: Poland
Jews, Poles and a country that just won't let itself disappear. Again.
Places: Warsaw, Gdansk, Malbork, Krakow & Auschwitz.
Coolest thing I did: Was taken aback by the sheer scale of the horrors of Auschwitz.
Coolest thing I didn´t know: The chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trails, Sir Hartley Shawcross lived to be 101. He died just last week. Guess he outlived most of the Nazis he tried.
I have to admit to having known practically nothing about Polish history (except the bits I learned in Russia that relate) before arriving in Warsaw last week. I had a good friend in High School from Poland, and I was also seeing a girl of Polish extraction before leaving Sydney. I've since been spending the last week seeing various features of all the Poles I knew in Sydney displayed on the streets here. I don't think I've ever been able to see so strongly the characteristic poses and gestures that people must carry in their genes. I wonder how many of these kinds of inherited features I'm unconsciously displaying from my hodge potch mix of ancestors.
Warsaw was a good place to see what modern Poland is about. Standing in the entrance to the castle in the old town, the gaurd noticed me looking at a black and white photo of an archway standing in the post WWII ruins of Warsaw. He pointed to the arch, grunted, then pointed to the same photo taken in 1994. The castle, the whole old town I was standing had been completely flattened, in all directions. This explains why the historical sites are all restored only on the town's old royal mile. It would have been impossible to rebuild the whole town because, quite simply, nothing was left. This is a common theme in Poland's history. Besides a breif century of glory when it (as part of Poland-Lithuania) was the biggest power in medieval Central Europe, Poland has had it's borders redrawn by foreign powers constantly. Russia, Prussia and Austria even managed to wipe it off the map (besides a brief respite when Napoleon recreated it as the Grand Duchy of Warsaw) for a couple of hundred years.Waves of foreign powers have tried to wipe this country out and like a cork it keeps bobbing back to the surface.
Modern Warsaw shows the recent growth of the 90s in the glass towers rising out of the communist style grey blocks that cover most of the city. It even has a proper Stalin gothic skyscraper that their good buddy Joe Stalin had built in the 30s. Out of all the Warsaw pact countries, Poland appears to have been the least happy with the benevolent protection of the Soviet tanks and secret police on their doorsteps. More on this later.
From Warsaw, I went north, to Gdansk (the annunciation marks won't show up, so I won't try and spell it correctly). Despite it's history as a prosperous member of the Hansatic League (those champions of protectionist trade and closed markets), Gdansk it's that important until the 20th century. Most of the action happens a bit further south.
An easy daytrip from Gdansk is Malbork, site of the largest Gothic castle in all of Europe. It's a lovely red brick colour, but besides that, it's pretty ugly. Functional is probably a better word. It was built by a group of blokes called the Teutonic Order, someone who the Poles probably regret asking to settle there in the first place. The Teutons were a bunch of German crusaders who, after being booted out of the Holy land by the Muslim armies, settled in Venice and helped them ransack Constantinople when they should have been killing infidels. With this stirling record intact, the Polish lords decided to invite them to come and convert all those pesky pagans they had living in the North of their country. The Teutonic Order had other ideas and took "converting pagans" to mean "take over all our lands and oppress the natives". Polish and German are very different languages, you see how these kind of things can happen. The Teutons then ruled the Northern seaboard of Poland until the united armies of Poland-Lithuania managed to defeat them. They did retain their holdings in what would become East Prussia, eventually forming the miltary power that would create modern Germany and inflict 2 world wars and the Holocaust on the world. Not the wisest decision to invite the Order, with 800 years hindsight.
Gdansk itself, it's famous for being the place which, by being bombed by the German, was where WWII started. More recently, it was the home of Solidarity, the movement that eventually brought down communism in Eastern Europe. As a striking labour movement in the 70s and 80s, they managed to bring about talks between themselves, the Church and the Communist Party that brougt about the first free election. Seeing as Gorbi in Russia wasn't going to continue driving tanks over people for this kind of behaviour, the election took place. The Communists won zero seats. Having proven their popularity in open competition, the Communist powers of Eastern Europe had to then watch a chain of events sweep over the continent and end the Cold War in less than 18 months.
Krakow is one of the more fortunate tales of World War 2. They managed to not have the large scale destruction inflicted on every other city in Poland, and it's old town and castle are still very much intact, with the restorations not being as obviously new as in other places. It's also, as a result, more of a backpacker haven, and I'm speaking more English to more people than I have in a week. I'm also drinking alot more beer and seeing the nightlife. There is also a Lenonardo painting here, which is of a noble woman holding some kind of ferret. Funny bloke, that da Vinci fella.
The main drawcard here, however, is Auschwitz. Having seen the monuments to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in that city, you get a feeling for just how hopless the plight of the Jews, Gypsies and other undesirables were at the time. The concentration camps take this to a whole new level. Never before in human history has Genocide been carried out on such an industrial scale before. It was truly a horrible crime to fit the age that spawned it. Justified by pseudo science and the twisting of big, philosophical ideas, it's hard to imagine how this happened, especially seeing as many of the survivors are still here. These were not the actions of derranged medieval lords, but of people of just the last century. You just don't get the scale of the thing until you see the rooms filled with shoes, clothes, fake limbs and get told that that is 1% of the shoes from the people that were killed in the short duration of 5 years. Only through cold hearted efficiency and division of labour could approx 2m people be killed in that one place.
I think it's a place everyone should go. If nothing else, it's a reminder of just how much evil, we as a race, can come to commit. It screams at us not to do it again. How much worse would the first genocide of the Information Age be? We can now see the double helix that makes us what we are, and are toying with the ability to change these genes. As scientists agree that race is nothing but a combination of chemicals in our DNA, how much tweaking can we do before we wipe out the characteristics of entire races through selective manipulation. We have to be so much more careful.
The news of the death of the cheif British prosecutor at the Nazi war crimes trials, Sir Hartley Shawcross, is also quite timely. In the aftermath of the largest, most horrible war ever perpetuated on mankind, the man making the case against the ringleaders insisted on trials based on international laws the Nazis had broken, rather than a kangaroo court of victor's justice. How then, can Mr Bush and co be talking about holding closed, military tribunals to "try" terrorist suspects they have just spent the last 18 months kept in cages in Cuba? The World Trade was a tragedy, but in comparison to the horror of World War II, it was nothing. Why can we just suspend internation law and civil liberties now, when they wouldn't stand for it back then?
I've found Poland a good way to start my brain working again. I think I'd let it shut down a little after Russia and in Berlin, I guess I was just a bit tired. I'm enjoying the fact that most people I'm meeting, both locals and travelers are open minded and want to have deep discussions about things like politics, history and the like. I admit, conversations with Austrians at 4 in the morning about right wing politics and the EU expansion may not change the world, especially when it's on top of several (very cheap I might add) beers, but it's good fun. And I'm learning alot.
Poland has also been good on the wallet too. After Scanders, and to some extent Russia, this week has seen a severe loosening of monetary policy on my part. You can cross the whole country for 12 pounds. You can't even get on a train for 12 pounds in Germany. I made the startling discovery in Berlin that I'd lost 10kg since April (and those who know, I was pretty skinny to start with) so all the stodgy, cheap food and beer is probably good for me. I feel alot better too.
Right, next I'm off to the mountain border with Slovakia to do my first ever on-foot border crossing. It's a bit harder in Australia. New Zealand is a hell of a swin.