POLAND: A WALKING TOUR OF KRAKOW'S OLD TOWN

June 23, 2019

Krakow (pronounced "krack - ohv") is one of the oldest cities in Poland and traditionally the center of Polish culture, academics, arts, and economics. Therefore, this is a good time to discuss Polish money, which combines at least culture, arts, and economics.

First off, can I just say that our US dollars are so BORING compared to these colorful bills?  The green 100 zloty note (roughly pronunced "zwall-tuh") has the face of Wladyslaw II Jagiello (King of Poland 1386-1434) on front and the eagle from his tombstone and the Grunwald swords on the back. The blue 50 zloty has the face of Kazimierz II Wielki (aka Casimir the Great, King of Poland 1333-1370) on the front and the white eagle from his personal seal on the back. The pink-orange 20 zloty has the face of Boleslaw I the Brave (first King of Poland in 1025) on front and a silver coin from his reign on the back.  

In the US, our "faces" only go back to George Washington (President from 1789-1797). We are such a young nation.

By the way, $1 USD = 3.78 zloty OR 1 zloty = about 25¢.

We had booked a personal tour of Krakow through Cracowguide.com.pl. Our guide, Krzysztof Blaszczyk (who told us to call him Chris--thank goodness), met us at the edge of Old Town in Jan Matejko Square at the Grunwald Statue, an imposing, hard-to-miss piece:

When I looked up this statue for this post, I learned that the monument was commissioned by Ignacy Jan Paderewski, an internationally famous pianist who became the president of Poland in 1919, nine years after this statue was erected.

The Battle of Grunwald, fought in 1410, was the turning point that marked the end of the domination of the German-Prussian Teutonic Knights and the rise of the Polish-Lithuanian Union. The guy on the horse on the top is King Wladyslaw Jagiello, the king on the 100 zloty note. The prone body on the front is the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Urluch Von Jungingen. His pinky finger looks like it gets rubbed/touched a lot:

POLAND: BOOKS ABOUT AUSCHWITZ

There are SO MANY books about Auschwitz: fiction, memoir, and historical. I think most people have probably read at least one. Here are a few that I have read within the last few years. If you have another one that you found insightful and worth reading, please leave the name of the book in the comments.

Man's Search for Meaning 
by Viktor Frankl
Perhaps the first significant book written about Auschwitz, this book was published in 1946 and is considered one of the most influential books of the 20th century. I first read this book when I was in high school, and while some of the deep psychological underpinnings of the second half of the book escaped me then, I nevertheless had a profound experience as I read about Frankl's experiences as detailed in the first half of the book. The older I get, the more meaningful his discussion of choosing one's response to suffering becomes.

My favorite quote from the book is this: "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

POLAND: THE WIELICZKA SALT MINE

The Wieliczka Salt Mine lies about 50 miles east of Auschwitz, on the other side of Krakow.  It’s ambitious to do both Auschwitz and the salt mines in a single day, but Bob thought we were up for it. (Of course he did.)

It was a beautiful drive through what looked like mostly farmland:

One of the oldest mines in the world, Wieliczka was first excavated as early as the 13^th century and was a producing salt mine until 1996. My guess is that it makes as much money from the tourist industry these days as it used to earn from salt mining. In peak summer months, as many as 9,000 tourists/day pay the entrance fee to go down into the caves, and about a million people visit the site each year. At about $23/ticket, it’s not cheap, although it is a little cheaper for Poles and Polish speakers, and there is also a family rate.

We began our tour in this large building, which is the mine entrance and once housed offices. That tower, called a "headframe," is an above-ground extension of the main mine shaft and houses a massive pulley:

The mine is spread over nine levels, is over 1,070 feet deep, and has more than 170 miles of labyrinthine passageways and hundreds of chambers. I would not want to be inside with no lights and no guide, that’s for sure.

POLAND: AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU CONCENTRATION CAMP

June 22, 2019

After a good night's sleep and a fabulous breakfast in our new hotel in Krakow, (the Hampton by Hilton), a guide from KrakowTrip.com picked us up at 8:30 in a minibus. We made stops at a couple more hotels to pick up six additional passengers, and then headed out to perhaps the most infamous site in Poland: the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp.

Auschwitz is located about 35 miles west of Krakow, a 1 1/4-hour-long drive. We passed through beautiful forested countryside, and at some point we stopped to look at some train tracks and what appeared to be an abandoned box car.

It was abandoned--intentionally--to show visitors what prisoners arrived in when they were brought to Auschwitz. Note that there are no windows. Imagine being in one of these for days without bathrooms, without ventilation, without shock absorbers, and without space to lie down or even to sit.

The name "Auschwitz" is the German version of the Polish word Oświęcim, the name of a nearby town that was an important railroad junction. At the beginning of the war, Jews comprised more than half the population of the area, or about 8,000 people. In 1940 and 1941, the Nazis systematically expelled all the residents as part of their plan to create a 15-square-mile buffer zone around what would become their most deadly concentration camp of the war. The homes and other buildings were destroyed, and in the process, eight villages simply disappeared.

Auschwitz I was the main camp and the seat of the camp administration. The first group of 30 prisoners, who arrived in May 1940, were convicted German criminals. Their role was to be "functionaries," or to supervise the other prisoners. Their sadistic behavior established the tone of the camp early on.

I have seen the photo below many times, and it was chilling to stand in this spot myself.  Arbeit Macht Frei means "Work makes you free." The Nazis installed a version of this sign in multiple concentration camps, including Dachau. Made by prisoners, it was placed at Auschwitz by order of Commandant Rudolf Hoss:

Notice anything strange in the word "arbeit"? The B is upside-down, which some say was an act of defiance by its creators: