Night Train to Krakow, Poland Arriving Friday May 17
We continued for our third and final night train that has now traveled from Greece to Sofia, Bulgaria, through Serbia, Romania, and Hungary and now on to Poland. I immediately noticed the more formal nature of the Polish people who are more formally dressed with woman in dresses and men often in sport jackets on the streets. Our English speaking tour guide was immediately overwhelmed by the nature of the Israeli group that rarely gave her a chance to speak as they always broke into a clatter of Hebrew language, despite a member of the group who was appointed to do the translation. There are many conflict in the tour presentation in Poland. Yes, Poland was a dynasty long standing in Eastern Europe that had an incredibly rich history of Jewish people. The tour guide, who I will go into more detail later on a subsequent entry clailmed that the Poles eres the best friends of the Jewish people. However, she always presented the Nazi situation as one of an invasion where the Polish people did not want to cooperate with the extermination of the Jewish people. I will admit that I was not aware that the Nazi machine destroyed the entire country of its monuments, buildings, etc that was completely restored after the communists left. But nowhere in our tours of Krakow did anyone admit their complicity in the cooperation with the Nazi invaders of the complete elimination of the Jewish people. It was now becoming evident that everywhere the Nazi invaders went, their initial targeting of the Jews was often welcomed by the people of the countries invaded.
Krakow is a very interesting city as it is different from most Polish cities. The Germans destroyed virtually every building in the major Polish cities except for Krakow which largely survived in its original form. Our first stop was the Kazimierz District that housed Krakow’s Jewsfor 500 years particularly after 1495 when the Jews were expelled from Krakow that they arrived in major numbers in Kazimierz. By the 17thcentury, Kazimierz was flourishing with numerous synagogues. The Jewish population increased to approximately 65,000 prior to World War II and a rich cultural life emerged in this community. But this changed shortly after the start of WWII with the Nazis monstrous ideas of racial superiority. Only 3,000-5,000 Jews survived the Holocaust. Of that number, 1,200 survived through the help of Oskar Schindler. He arranged for many prisoners of the Plaszow camp 2 meters from Krakow to be moved to his factory, shielding them from deportation to the major death camps. Plazkov camp no longer exists, and a photo is included of the memorial sculpture on the site that we visited. which is a park. We toured a number of ancient synagogues and the remaining cemetary which had all been looted and significantly damaged during WWII.
Krakow’s Jewish culture has gradually been reintroduced and we toured the remaining synagogue from the 16thcentury, and there were a number of “Jewish Style” restaurants. As a matter of fact, there are Jewish bookstores and many public celebrations of ALL of the Jewish holidays. But here is the rub on the whole thing. While the tour guides who are not Jewish have become experts on the Jewish community up to World War II, there are no Jews remaining in the entire country out of the 3,500,000 Jews that lived there before the war.
Thus, the celebration of Jewish Culture that goes on in that Country today is a bit of a farce because they exterminated an entire culture and now pay homage celebrating the Jewish culture that the Poles contributed to the elimination. It’s the old phrase of “what if they gave a war and no one came.” Well, the celebrations of Jewish culture are the same thing. There are no Jews there to participate in Poland. Of course, the tour guide in Krakow would not discuss the hand that the fellow Poles had in the extermination of the Jews of Krakow. So they get rid of the Jews and now they profit by creating a huge tourism center showing off the Jewish Quarter.
Behind the peeling facades and wooden shutters are dozens of hip bars and jazz clubs hat cater to the many college students in the region. The pubs have an air of prewar timelessness in buildings that date as far back as the 1600’s. I did go to a pub that had music on the first night that we were there, but the cigarette smoke was overwhelming and I found myself coughing for hours after leaving the pub
We also toured the Wawel area which is the Polish version of Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey rolled into one. It is an assortment of Renaissance and Gothic architecture dating from the 14thCentury. The Wawel castle sits on a hill and it is behind fortified walls. It served as the original capital of Poland until the various invasions through history that destroyed the castle which was recently restored to its grandeur.
Tags: Travel
jelacr1
Hi Joe,
Enjoying your travel diary a great deal. I hope you’re well–I note a gap in “coverage.”
I burned a DVD of the KCET show about the Slovaks who escaped Auschwitz and helped save probably half of the Hungarian Jews from extermination.
I’m looking forward to your anticipated colossal slide show upon your return!
Safe traveling,
Stan