Screaming Ghosts Amidst Old World Splendour (Poland)

We are on the way back from two great weeks of travel in Poland! Country #90 for me! I had been hesitant to go there before because of the horrible legacy of the holocaust (much more on that later-primarily for the non-Jewish/non-Western-educated readers: I couldn’t imagine adding anything to 11yrs of JPPS/Bialik private Mtl Jewish education on this topic), planning for it eventually (along with Germany) to be a trip with a much more somber and Jewish-focused tone. However I ended up deciding not to wear complete Jewish blinders as I began to realize just how rich a travel and historical (much of it as the victim) destination Poland was.

We flew Luftansa (who are unfortunately becoming influenced quality-wise by their Star Alliance partner Air Canada as opposed to the much more desirable reverse effect, yet our 45min transfer in Munich was very impressive with a dedicated agent taking the 9 of us separately thru a fast-track customs and then driving us right up to the aircraft!) into Gdansk –on Poland’s (northern) Baltic Coast. Went straight to the 34km sandbank spit-like Hel peninsula (pun in part intended, but in reality a spa destination) for a couple days of “relaxation”- including cycling on its length-long dedicated bike path, and to the sand dunes of nearby Slowinski Natl Park. We were very impressed with the beauty of the large tree-lined and huge (visible from the airplane) bright yellow rapeseed flower field-backed rural small highways in the area. Then in to Gdansk, who’s medieval gated and cobble-stoned old “main” town’s architecture is the equal of any in Europe, and its huge 15th century (reconstructed after ww2 destruction) waterfront crane unique. Its history shifts back and forth btw Germany and Poland, and during the interwar period was a free city-state of Danzig/Gdansk. It was largely built by the Teutonic Knights along with their nearby monstrous red-brick capital fortress of Malbork Castle- former home to their Grand Master, UNESCO-listed and Europe’s largest Gothic castle .The Gdansk shipyards are also where the first cracks in the Soviet communist block appeared with Lech Walesa-led protests and strikes, and is now home to the new and excellent European Solidarity Center Museum- Polish museums in general are very well done.

The Teutonic Knights were a Germanic order who (according to James Michener, knowledge of who’s book “Poland”- which I’m now almost halfway thru, contributed to my interest in visiting, and his opening acknowledgment stating that he chose that country when invited to go to any exotic place in the world in 1977 to film a documentary was the biggest factor in my decision to take off my Jewish blinders) floundered in their 1189 founding purpose of holy land crusading, became a de-facto Germanic Baltic country over the next 3 centuries advertising themselves as closer to home crusaders christianizing pagan Poles (who, for what it is worth in reality had already been Christian for centuries) and Prussians (the later via eliminating them: those not killed were enslaved and forbidden to marry so that no progeny would be forthcoming, the Knights then took their name, so that when Prussia rose to power in later centuries there was “hardly a true Prussian alive”- it hard to imagine that Hitler didn’t find these guys inspiring. The Knights “acted under a signed commission from the Pope, so that regardless of how they behaved, they acted with Papal Authority and the approval of God Himself.” Do you now all see why I like Michener?

Next was a night in a beautiful inn in the countryside along the unique 82km Elblag canal, complete with private dinner, rowboat for the morning, followed by private (but still fabulous buffet spread) brunch, and bikes for the afternoon, which we took to one of the many slipways where boats are loaded onto rail trolleys to be dragged across the intervening dry land as a means of dealing with elevation change. The plan was approved by the King of Prussia in 1836 as this had never been done before (it still is the only one in Europe at least). Followed by a night in the picturesque walled Gothic gingerbread town of Torun, birthplace of Copernicus, where for dinner I ate 9 types of perogies while sitting in the restaurant’s ladder-reached, single-table loft, paradoxically coming with an 11% discount off the already cheap prices!

We had great weather for those first 5d, however the following wk was cold and rainy. Maybe just as well, as the mood needed to become a lot more somber for visiting Warsaw and Krakow. Altho it occurred before I was born, and no one in my family was killed in it (a great uncle died as a Russian casualty of ww2, my grandparents all came over from Russia after ww1 largely due to Eastern European anti-Semitism and pogroms [anti-Jewish murderous riots], tho my Zaida did come thru Poland), the Holocaust is by far the historical event with the greatest impact on my life, and attitudes towards humanity, what it is capable of, and morality. Listening to my grade 2 teacher’s attempts at linguistic contortions and moral gymnastics in trying to answer why god allowed it to happen to his chosen people [for whom he had supposedly intervened so many times before with miracles] is my earliest memory of questioning god’s existence-the holocaust was obviously so much easier to explain if god just didn’t exist .Paradoxically the holocaust is also one of the reasons I still very much consider myself Jewish despite my functional atheism (technically I’m agnostic, but at 99.99 and many more 9s %- it’s impossible to disprove The Great Flying Spaghetti Monster In The Sky [if you haven’t heard of him-google it!]…). Hitler didn’t ask one’s belief’s before sending Jews to the gas chambers- ¼ Jewish was his functional definition. In fact many European and especially German Jews were very assimilated, often atheistic and many didn’t even consider themselves Jewish [one of the new things I learned in Auschwitz, was just how correct my view was- Hitler railed against “Jewish intellectualism” contaminating German culture, not Jewish traditionalism- it was the Karl Marxes, Freuds, and future Gloria Steinems of the world with whom he had the greatest problem-needless to say he wouldn’t have made any exceptions for Stuart Kreisman. Had we been there 75yrs earlier, Jiak Chin would have been killed for harbouring me in her Warsaw apartment. One last personal comment: we were taught that the most important reason to study and widely publicize the holocaust (which has been successful despite the odd nutcase such as Zundel or former Iranian president I’mANutJob; I meant Ahmadinejad) was to ensure “Never Again”. This was intended not only for Jews, but for all humanity. Yet only decades later it is clear that this treasured mantra was just words- with genocide of 800 000 Rwandan Tutsis by Hutus over months in 1994 despite ample opportunity for the world to intervene (In retrospect, Clinton called it the worst failing of his presidency. I agree.). At least Israel, despite many faults, would truly do whatever necessary to prevent a repeat to Jews.

Although, of course, it was the nazis who were the perpetrators, Poland was the principal site of the holocaust. Of the 6 million Jews killed in history’s worst case of genocide, 3 million were Polish, and a 4th million were transported to Poland in order to be gassed there. Poland’s population was 1/10th Jewish before the war, 90% of them were killed, much higher than Europe’s average of ~55%, which was also the rate among German Jews (Lithuania was 94%, tho much smaller numbers). In school we were taught that Polish anti-Semitism played a role in this. Trying to understand this, and Poland’s current attitude toward the question of their own partial responsibility, and Jews today was of considerable interest to me. Of course there is no easy answer to this question. Polish anti-Semitism was widespread, however probably not any more so than elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Poland certainly does needs to shoulder some blame for the holocaust, yet so does the rest of the world. Canada’s Jewish immigration policy was enunciated by our minister as “none is too many”. Global refusal to accept Jews [except Shanghai!] certainly played a role in Hitler’s determination that extermination was the only way to solve the “Jewish Question”. Altho there is controversy about just how much they understood, the USA and Allies clearly knew about Auschwitz as early as 1942, and despite urging by some Jewish groups, and definite technical feasibility decided not to bomb either the gas chambers or even the rail lines transporting Jews to Auschwitz.

Poland had the world’s largest pre-ww2 Jewish population precisely because over the prior centuries it was much better to Jews (at least legally) than other European countries. It had the bad luck of geography, and suffered much more in ww2 than any other country (another 3 miilion non-Jewish Poles also died during ww2, altho not by systemic design. For centuries the Germans schemed to destroy the entity of Poland, altho not its people themselves. In fact Poland, which has functionally existed since ~1200CE, was partitioned in 1795 btw Germany/Prussia, Russia and Austria, only coming back in official existence after ww1). Anti-Semitism does not necessarily equate to agreeing with or even not actively opposing genocide, and altho there were no shortage of Polish collaborators, traitors and facilitators, Poland has more people on Israel’s list of righteous among nations than any other country (as of course it should given it is where most of the holocaust happened), and this despite the fact that only in Poland was nazi policy to kill not only anyone found hiding a Jew, but their entire family as well. On at least one occasion Poland’s govt in exile called specifically for Allied help for its Jews. On the other hand, when the rest of the world was horrified over the holocaust, in 1946 in Kielce, Poland there was yet another pogrom killing 40 Jews, leading to many of the few surviving Jews emigrating, mostly to Israel. There was also official blame of Jewish elements in 1967-8 anti-communist activity, and firings of Jewish workers over the actions of Israel in their 1967 war. The holocaust is taught mostly as a part of ww2 history, with only the Germans being to blame. At least one of Krakow’s museums is now however undertaking efforts to “teach the teachers”. Today there are so few Polish Jews that the question of anti-Semitism is largely a theoretical one. Krakow, where Jewish historical tourism in the former Jewish quarter of Kazimierz is very popular with several museums and synagogues, and many Jewish-themed restaurants (all non-Jew led: the restaurant , complete with live Jewish music, where we nevertheless had a great time celebrating our anniversary had chicken liver with brie cheese listed as a Jewish item! [I hope even my non-Jewish readers know enough about Judaism to see the problem here…kashrut violations aside, it tasted excellent however!]) has only ~200 Jews actually living there. Yet there is no question that there have been attempts at Jewish cultural revival and policy change since the end of Soviet domination in 1989. In 2014 Warsaw opened the excellent Museum of The History of Polish Jews. Anyone who wants more on this controversy can try this very recent link I just found (read the comments, probably truth on both sides… ):

http://www.algemeiner.com/2016/03/25/polands-very-short-memory-on-jews-and-the-holocaust/#

Warsaw was completely leveled following uprising against the retreating Nazis in 1944 (long after the Jews were all gone), largely out of spite (Hitler’s orders were to kill every inhabitant), and surprisingly allowed by the Red Army which stopped its advance at the city’s outskirts while this took place; seemingly explicable only through further hatreds. The old town was reconstructed. Also visited Stalin’s Palace of Culture and Science skyscraper, and Lazienki Park. Krakow is much more beautiful than Warsaw, with a large and architecturally impressive old town and huge central square with Cloth Hall in the middle and underground ruins that have been converted into a museum, and nearby Wawel Castle from which Poland was ruled for many centuries. We spent a day visiting Auschwitz/Birkenau itself (1hr away), which is fully preserved (other extermination camps and ghettoes are not, the former having been destroyed by the retreating nazis in an attempt to hide their crimes). Seeing in person the “Arbeit Macht Frei” {=work makes free, an attempt to deceive arriving Jews) sign and train tracks leading into Birkenau (the larger of the 2 extermination camps) was of course very moving, as was standing in one of the actual gas chambers (FYI for the endos: the gas, zyklon B [paradoxically developed decades earlier by German Jewish scientist Fritz Haber as a pesticide], was made by a great-grandparent company of Sanofi-Aventis, Hoechst, but don’t let this influence your insulin decisions- it doesn’t influence mine. Bayer and BASF also involved), however what affected me most was seeing the massive piles or personal items :a conglomeration of thousands of twisted wire-framed spectacles, rooms full of human hair (collected for sale) and over-worn shoes, and especially one of suitcases with the owners’ names printed in big letters in hope of future retrieval, Klara Goldstein’s right up front.

Also visited the massive underground Wieliczka salt mine, source of Krakow’s wealth (forced long tour- Poland’s main attractions were quite crowded despite it not yet being high season, Auschwitz now gets >1 million visitors annually forcing it to have so many rules for visiting that you’d think it was run by the …. Ok, I won’t say it, but did think it. If you show up btw 10am and 3pm you can only visit by joining a tour, however these are all sold out in advance…so we made it an early morning start), and had an essentially private tour of the impressive Krakow Bishop’s Palace in Kielce (to break up drive to Krakow, v. quiet as off tourist track 2hrs north), Spent the last 2 1/2 d on a lighter note doing some great hiking and decent biking in the picturesque Tatras mountains resort city of Zakopane. Stepped across the snow-covered ridge line into Slovakia (country #63 for JC, I’d been before).

A few more points about Polish history- as previously mentioned it has been a victim many times. Its worst disaster was not the nazis, or Soviets, nor the Tartars of its early years or the Cossacks (who also specifically targeted Jews in a much less well-documented mini-genocide in 1648, estimates of #s range from 10K-500K, most ~50K), but actually the Swedes (Who would have thought? Sorry, MJ!) in the deluge of 1655-60 where 40% of total Polish population perished (no specific targeting of Jews to my knowledge). Michener comments that altho they did also plunder the country’s wealth, fortunately for us they at least appreciated it: if you want to learn about Poland go to a museum in Stockholm! While part of this repeated victimhood was a function of geography, it was also in part self-inflicted: for centuries Poland was dominated by a few dozen large landholding “magnates”. They together formed its parliament, “The Seym”, but, in what they considered the ultimate freedom, “The Golden freedom”, they each held a “liberum veto” whereby via simply stating “I object” any one man could veto the work of an entire session of parliament. This led to their votes essentially being for sale to all the other countries in Europe with any interest in Polish affairs. Furthermore kings were also elected by the magnates, after the prior’s death, usually choosing a foreigner, and limiting his power to either tax or build a central army. Poland today has a very homogenous population: no Jews, no blacks, no Muslims, no Chinese, Indians or other Asians.

The country has recovered very well from communism. It is modern and the roads good- altho major highways generally don’t go where needed, and when they do tail-gaiting at 140km/h (the speed limit on those) or more is unfortunately the norm. The food was excellent (and cheap!)- many gourmet meals and interesting restaurants, even very good Chinese and Indian food. We also stayed in some very interesting places- most notable was a penthouse apartment in a communist housing block completely done up like a medieval castle: complete with spiked doors, stone-walled, chainmail-curtained shower stall, and throne toilet! All hotels and restaurants are non-smoking (and to our happy surprise rules were followed!- only problem was apartment rental in outdoor wood-smoky Zakopane that was supposed to be smoke-free clearly was not, tho the managers did find us another place), however on the streets secondhand smoke was quite ubiquitous and assailing.

So to sum up, Poland is a fascinating place to travel. We’d recommend it highly!

(thanks to MP and JG for suggestions and planning help)

Stu