Nazi? Not me!
Kraków NOW
DATELINE – KRAKÓW
Sweet T. and I arrived in Kraków on Friday. When she first proposed joining her, her sister, her nephew and his girlfriend on an ancestral (they’re part Polish) trip to the former Polish capital I offered to stay home with the cats. Of all the European destinations I’d thought I’d visit first, Kraków was not on my bingo card. Then I started looking into the city, marveling that – among other facts – the Rynek Główny (literally “Main Market Square”) was initially laid out in 1257 after a Mongol invasion and is Europe’s largest and longest in use. I’ve never even been to a Renaissance Faire or Medieval Times. Old Kraków also has a dizzying mixture of Medieval, Romanesque, Baroque and Gothic architecture. The city was never flattened in WWII so you get to see all of this on foot within 20 minutes. It turns out Kraków is one of the most architecturally intact cities in Europe.
Then I also discovered that Kraków is a 90 minute railroad ride from Auschwitz-Birkenau. So I signed on.
I know it must sound morbid to have the most infamous Nazi extermination camp be the deciding factor in going but I’ve long been fascinated and horrified by Nazis since I first encountered them on Hogan’s Heroes, as dumb as it sounds. When I was a kid, TV (Combat, Rat Patrol) and the movies (The Great Escape. The Longest Day. The Dirty Dozen. Von Ryan’s Express. The Guns of Navarone. Where Eagles Dare. Battle of the Bulge. Kelly’s Heroes) in the 1960s and ‘70s were full of Nazis. I started reading and watching everything I could about them, trying to figure out how an unremarkable Austrian with one descended testicle and a micro-penis was able to persuade Germans to commit genocide on 6 million Jews and 5–6 million others. Essentially, anyone they considered racially inferior or in their way –intellectuals, priests, teachers, political leaders, students and those seen as possible future resistance – were fed into their killing machine. In fact, before Auschwitz (where Nazis systematically murdered 960,000 Jews, 74,000 Non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Roma & Sinai, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war and roughly 10,000 political prisoners from across Europe, LGBTQ+ prisoners, Jehovah’s Witnesses and anyone else deemed “asocial” or “undesirable” – homeless people, beggars, sex workers, those labeled “work-shy” and habitual petty offenders). became the center of Jewish genocide it held Polish political prisoners. And, of course, Poland was the first country Hitler invaded on his way to supposed world domination.
Now that Nazis are on the rise again and one of America’s two political parties shrugs at their infiltration in their ranks, it feels urgent and timely to see the logical endpoint of anti-semitism and racially-based hatred.
After connecting in Zurich (its airport features luxury goods, chocolate and luxury chocolates exclusively) we caught a quick connecting flight to Kraków, where it took us almost as long to wrangle an Uber (90% of the cabs here are Uber /Bolt, with a few old school taxis hanging on) to our hotel. Saturday we hit Wawel Castle, then were all over the main square, ducking in and out of St. Mary’s Church (officially, “Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary”), Cloth Hall, the Christmas Market (which was absolutely MOBBED). On a stroll through Old Town (AKA Old Krakow) we stumbled on Corpus Christi Church, its interior one of the most stunning I’ve seen.
Sunday I got out in the fog early to hit the Plac Nowy flea market in search of Soviet-era watches, lighters, rings, etc. But Sundays are for vintage clothing merchants, not “smalls,” so I did a quick pivot and found myself in front of Oskar Schindler’s Enamelworks Museum moments before the doors opened at 9 AM. I was fortunate enough to have the place largely to myself as I wandered its three floors of devastating exhibits covering the Nazi occupation (1939 – 1945) of Kraków. Then I found the nearest train station and rode along with a charming black & white dog (below) named Satan (his owner pronounced it “SUH-ten” and apologized when I figured it out anyway: “I didn’t name him!”) and soon met up with the rest of our crew at Kraków Glowny train station for the ride to the Wieliczka Salt Mine. Holy crap, that place is positively INSANE. The world’s longest continually-operating salt mine, it’s now a UNESCO World Heritage site, conducting tours in 5 or 6 languages. When I checked my phone to see how far I’d walked it was nearly 6 miles, as deep as 400 meters underground.
Monday we took it a bit easy, hitting the Kazimierz (Jewish Quarter) again, ducking in and out of small shops and grabbing tea near Plac Nowy. Today, we’ll take in some of the sites we haven’t yet, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow. Wednesday if all goes to plan, we board an early PolRegio train from Kraków Glówny train station to Oświęcim, the town nearest the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum (Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the much larger extermination camp with the iconic railway gate, is in the village of Brzezinka, about 2 miles away). I’m not sure how it will hit me to be in the epicenter of Nazi evil but I am preparing myself to be overwhelmed.
And to redouble my efforts to fight our own homegrown Nazis when we return to the states Thursday.
