by Helen Eleasari
[I imagine by now, dedicated ROTters know who Helen Eleasari is and how I know her. I’ve published many of her reviews of theater
in Israel, written for the Jerusalem Post, and other posts she’s written expressly for ROT. I’ve
also run some of her reports and journal entries on her travels, and now she’s
sent me a description of the short trip she and her daughter Rava took to
Warsaw and Krakow, Poland. I’m delighted
that Helen’s permitted me to share her account with readers of ROT, and I hope it sparks interest in many of
you—whether you’ve ever been to Poland, plan to some day, or not.
[I, as it happens, have visited
the east European country, but it was only once for a few days in Warsaw back
in 1965, then I was an 18-year-old high schooler in Switzerland. I was on a school trip to the Soviet Union
(which was an adventure in itself I may some day recount). Unlike, Helen and Rava, I’ve never been to
Auschwitz or any of the camps. We did see the monument at Mila 18 to the
Ghetto uprising and the Jewish underground, made famous by the 1961 Leon
Uris novel.]
July 15, 2015
Rava and I are just back from 6 days in Poland: 3 in Warsaw,
3 in Krakow. We had a fine time . . . even the obligatory and dreaded visit to
Auschwitz was less traumatic (for me) than I’d anticipated. I lit candles for
those of my mother’s family who’d perished (we only know where for 2 of them)
and because it was windy, I placed them in the lee of the execution wall beside
the infamous barracks 11 in Auschwitz 1.
It appears now that I did well to light my candles there
because my cousin Arnold told me that his mother, my mother’s elder sister,
Katje, died at Auschwitz on January 27, 1945 – the very day the Russians
liberated the camp. . . .
As I wrote in my travel journal, What is beyond irony?
We’d booked a tour, which was the most sensible way of doing
it because we got ferried there and back from hotel, from Auschwitz to mind-
and soul-numbing Birkenau with an excellent guide in both places.
In Warsaw we stayed at the 5* Hilton (if there’d been a 6*
it would surely have qualified) – very pampering and built, as we discovered, a
stone’s throw from the Warsaw Ghetto. One of the 2 or three remaining bits of
the wall was about 200 yards away. We did not see memorial as Rava balked, but I
did manage to convince her to go to the former site of the Umschlagplatz [German
for ‘collection
point’ or ‘reloading point’;
the Warsaw square on Stawki Street, where Jews were gathered
under German occupation for deportation from the Warsaw Ghetto to
the Treblinka extermination camp] – now a wee, walled space with info
thereunto written in Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew and English.
There it is, surrounded by apartment buildings just as in
Berlin, the site of the Fuhrerbunker is now a parking lots backed by apartment
buildings.
Do you remember Carl Sandburg’s poem Grass?
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz
and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I
am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and
Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and
passengers ask the conductor:
What
place is this?
Where
are we now?
I
am the grass.
Let
me work.
The thing about the Sandburg poem is that if you substitute
the names of the death camps . . . it works horrifically!! I have been
busily looking him up. Grass was first
published in 1918 – so it was a response to WWI. But Sandburg lived until 1967
(b. 1878) – so he’d definitely have been aware of the camps.
At Auschwitz now, the grass covers the ground between the
paths, around and among the railroad tracks, so green and laced with its summer
bounty of clover, vetch, horsetails and other wildflowers. I was very conscious
of the poem, and not only there.
And there’s another supreme irony, that one of the most
anti-Semitic nations in Europe (though perhaps now less so), is raking in
millions from Holocaust tourism, itself an oxymoron.
In Warsaw we went to the Museum of the Uprising (opposite
the Hilton), a small but very dramatic museum that tells the story of the 1944
Warsaw Uprising via posters, artifacts, pictures, movies, slide shows. The Warsaw
Ghetto Rebellion also figured there . . . . We didn’t go to the Jewish
Museum.
On the lighter side we went to concerts, an organ recital
with an awesome Toccata and Fugue
in D minor [attributed to J. S. Bach] that left us totally limp, an
equally awesome recital of early Polish music by the Ensemble Peregrina that
makes this music its life work, and a lighthearted, utterly excellent
production of La finta giardiniera [“The
Pretend Garden-Girl,” W. A. Mozart]. . . it’s Mozart month in Poland,
so a lot of what we heard was by him.
Poland has very thoroughly discarded its Soviet satellite
past. Both Warsaw and Krakow are thoroughly cosmopolitan and capitalist with
soviet architectural remnants here and there, especially the supernally ugly
architectural abomination in Warsaw that’s called The Palace of Culture &
Science, visible from everywhere in the city. Stalin’s ‘gift’ to the Polish
people. It’s so ugly that I love it!!!
We ate good food – very international these days with every
cuisine known to man, and delectable pastries. The most delicious meal we had
was in Krakow, an unpretentious little place called Introligatornia – duck salad
with raspberry vinaigrette, goose-stuffed pierogi and roast duck leg with red
cabbage and ginger-infused stewed apples.
Rather than travel to Krakow by bus, we opted to fly. It was
cheaper – $45 – than an express bus – $50+ – and took 35 minutes vs. 4½ hours
on the road. Even with the security checks, etc., the whole trip took about 2½
hours. Rava had done her usual, i.e. seeking advice on the Trip Advisor forum.
TA has become our bible!!
In Krakow, which the Nazis left untouched [except for
looting], I did not feel oppressed as I had in Warsaw. Probably my imagination,
but to me Warsaw was resonant with pain.
Krakow Old Town is a delight – a friend of Rava’s lives
right off the Market Square – and we wandered happily. We went to the Jewish
Quarter which is still full of synagogues, but there are no Jews to fill them –
Amon Goth and Gov. Frank took care of that.
[Göth (b. 1908), or Goeth, was an SS captain who commanded the Krakow-Płaszow
concentration camp during the Nazi occupation of Poland; he was tried in Poland
for war crimes and executed in 1946. Hans Frank (b. 1900) became
Governor-General of the Nazi puppet General Government of Krakow; he was also
tried, in Nuremberg, for war crimes and executed in 1946.] Habad [also known as
Chabad: the Lubavitcher sect of Hasidic Judaism] has taken over one of the
oldest as its HQ and we saw a few Habadniks. . . The quarter has also
(according to Rava’s friend) the best pastry shop in Poland, so thither we went
for pastries and coffee. Yes, truly delicious. We also had a cup of hot
chocolate at Wedel’s – Poland’s premier chocolatier. It was, as Rava said, like
drinking a bar of chocolate – incredibly, impossibly, wonderfully velvety,
smooth and rich rich rich!!!
Sorry about the rhapsodies but Rava and I are
unreconstructed foodies.
Krakow also has a great castle [Wawel Castle]. We didn’t go
inside, but wandered the grounds, and heard a concert in one of the courtyards
– a lovely space that pampered the very good voices singing.
We spent some time in Wawel Cathedral, a huge, ornate and
elegant European Gothic church with some impressive tombs, including one
entirely of silver for St. Stanislaus, Poland’s patron saint. There’s another
church – St. Francis – with some amazing art nouveau stained glass windows.
As you can see, we took it easy. No rushing from museum to
museum, gallery to gallery.
We came home at 3 a.m. Monday on a ⅔-empty plane. I stretched
across 3 seats and managed to nap a bit!!
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