I have long admired the Polish people. Their spirit is amazingly fresh and eager. They are not afraid of hard work, and during the last economic boom in Europe they did all of the hard construction labor in Western Europe. Two anecdotes during our travels reinforce this theory. While visiting Sweden, and the island of Gotland (Read the June 25th Sweden post), we hired a tour guide for the island. There was a large medieval square in the center of Visby that was under renovation. The tour guide was opining about the unemployment situation, lack of money for the pensioners in the country, etc. as we were standing in the square. I inquired when the square would be completed, and she replied that the "Poles had been working on it for 2 years, and that it should be finished in two months". While living in London, I heard a comedian doing a skit about the employment situation in the UK - he was conducting a mock interview of an unemployed British worker - "Now, let me get this straight, this Polish worker arrived in London yesterday, can't speak a word of English, and he took Your job?" The Polish GDP projection for 2012 is the strongest in Europe +2.6, even eclipsing Norway's projection +2.0. They were smart enough to join the EU, but smarter still, not to adopt the Euro. Their country enjoys very inexpensive costs for food, clothing , entertainment and services. It was at least 40% cheaper than Italy, and 60% cheaper than Sweden and Denmark to live in Poland. My car needed it's 10,000 mile oil change and check up. I called the Mercedes dealership in Krakow on Monday morning. I got an appointment at 1:00PM that day. They took me to and from the dealership while the car was being serviced; changed the oil, fliters, and checked all of the "vital signs"; washed and waxed it; picked me up at 5:00PM and the cost was $190.
World War I & Polish Independence
1918 - Point 13 of Woodrow Wilson's famed "14 Points" - An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by Polish populations....should be assured a free and secure access to the sea...political and economic independence should be guaranteed by international covenant.
Immediately the Soviets attacked. The war lasted from 1919 -1921. In the 1920 Battle of Warsaw, Jozef Pilsudski beat the Russians,and came to power in a military coup. He died in 1935 and is credited with preserving the Polish state under difficult times.
World War II and the Holocaust
World War II was Poland's worst nightmare. Nazi Germany fired the first shot of the war at Polish forces in Gdansk on Septermber 1,1939. Russia attacked Poland from the East. In June 1941 the Nazis violated their nonagression pact and declared war on Russia. Poland was caught in between. Nearly a quarter of all Poles died in the war, including 3 million Polish Jews. Hitler orderd that Warsaw be destroyed building by building; 85% of the beautiful capital was burned to the ground. The Nazis used Polish soil for the worst of their plans to exterminate Europe's Jewish population and to reduce the Polish and Russian residents to slaves. Huge ghettos were set up to hold Poland's large Jewish population before they were sent to extermination camps. Ghettos in Warsaw,Lodz,Krakow,Kazimierz and Lubin were some of the largest.
The concentration camps in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka were established. The most poignant memory of the war include the 1940 massacre of Polish army officers by Soviet forces at the Katyn forest. The Soviets denied that they had carried out the mass killing, and bled it on the Nazis. Only after the1989 fall of the Soviet Union was the historical record made clear. It was only as recent as 2000 that memorials were established. The Soviets only officially apologized in 2010. When the Polish President Lech Kaczynski, and his family were travelling to Russia and their plane crashed. They were going to commemorate Katyn with a large ceremony in Russia.
I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2006 when I was in Poland for the first time. It was in January, 2006. I was standing in Birkanau with 3 of my friends and a guide. It was a sunny January day, 28 degrees with a slight breeze. We were all dressed with warm boots,gloves,hats and coats, shivering, as we listened to the guide explain that the prisoners were only clad in thin pajamas and thread bare work clothes, in barracks that were unheated with large spaces between the wooden walls for the cold air to blow in. I recalled a feeling of overwhelming sadness and helplessness for all of the tragegy that took place. It was a very powerful feeling.
We visited the Jewish section in Kazimierz - once home to 15,000 Jews who were herded across the river to Podgorze in a ghetto. Another 45,000 Jews lived in the area around Krakow. A total of 70,000 Jews, in Krakow alone were exterminated during World War II.
Attached are photos of the memorials that have been constructed in the last six years. There are less than 100 Jews currently living in Krakow.
Schindler's Krakow
The factory where Oskar Schindler employed and saved 1,100 Jews is now a memorial to the Holocaut.
Krakow
Eagle Pharmacy iin Bohaterow Getta. A place in history for this former working pharmacy. The brave work of Tandeusz Pankiewicz who would not move his place of buiness from the Jewish ghetto. It became a secret resource and meeting place for Jews attempting to survive the atrocities of the war.
This was where Jews were rounded up before being sent to concentration camps and the site of a Nazi massacure in 1943. It is dotted with 70 chairs, the installation by Piotr Lewicki and Kazimierz Latak harking back to the time when Jews had to discard their furniture before being sent to their death.
We visited the museum of the Polish uprising in Warsaw and the site of the Warsaw ghetto.
Names of the deceased in the Warsaw museum.
Silesia House - Krakow
This was the Gestapo headquarters during the war. Four tiny rooms - torture cells, with the original graffiti still carved on the walls. Desperate messages"...9-21-1944 - fifth day of beating"
Kazimierz - the Jewish quarter in Krakow. Fewer than 100 Jews are residing in this area.
Remuh Synagogue & Cemetery
Helena Rubenstein was born in this house in the Kazimierz district of Krakow in 1870 and died in NYC in 1965. She moved to Australia in 1902 with a jar of facecream her grandmother had given her. The Australians were in awe of her milky skin, and she soon developed her face cream in to a billion dollar cosmetics empire. She was at one point the richest woman in the world.
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