Writing this post has come two
weeks too late; I hope you haven’t been holding your breath. After overcoming
what is commonly known as the “mid trip lull” for abroadies, I was thrust into
a whirlwind of midterms this past week that left me mentally incapacitated.
…Until now. For the sake of my
blog, I am stalwartly mustering the brain cells to write a semi-intelligent
post while on a train from (Spoiler alert:
this will be my next blog
post) Paris, France to San Sebastian, Spain!
These past two weeks have truly
been a lull, and it comes as no surprise. With midterms lingering and the
semester passing the halfway point, both my bank and my spirit are just about
broken. My schedule has become a routine; local cuisine is becoming less
exciting and less foreign; nightlife has lost its luster (well, who am I
kidding…not completely.) In my relationship with Prague, the honeymoon phase feels about over.
Hence my swelling excitement when
we ventured to Krakow, Poland as part of a program-wide trip last weekend! A
bit of a change of scenery and a gaggle of good friends seemed like the spark I
needed to get back on track. Reverting back to our kindergarten tendencies on a
field trip sounded invigorating.
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| The rumors are true -- Krakow is freezing! |
However, I was also bracing myself
for the grave reality of Auschwitz; the history hit closer to home than any of
my previous excursions. To be more informed about my family history and ties, I
e-mailed my Uncle who practices genealogy, as he is one of the most learned
people I know. He reported back:
When it comes to the issue of the
Holocaust, our family fortunately came to America in 1906 (after a wave of
pogroms in Odessa, Ukraine in 1905). The town where much of the family came,
Severinovka was wiped out in a single day by the SS. All the remaining
Jews (all of whom were probably at least distantly related to us) were loaded
in a truck, along with many more from Odessa. They were driven about 60
miles into the country side and unceremoniously shot.
There were not that many Jews left in
Severinovka by that time, so the number was small, but that does not diminish
the deed. The specific portion of the family from Severinovka was the
Lipshitz family. My mother’s grandmother was Ethel (Etta) Lipshitz,
daughter of Eli and Adele Lipshitz. Ethel was born in Severinovka.
She married Isaac Druss about 1884 and came with her surviving 7 children to NY
in March of 1906. She then had a 10th
child in NY.
They left Ukraine some time in 1905
and traveled to Krakow where the stayed for 6 months because one of the girls
was sick and would not have been admitted to the US if still sick. Isaac
ran a dry good store in Krakow during that period and the whole family lived in
the back of the store.
Of the 7 children to come to America,
one was named Katya (Kate Levi was her married name mentioned in Isaac’s NY
Times Obit), and did not like America. She went to Switzerland to become
a teacher, where she met Sergi Levi from Latvia. They went to Riga
(Capital of Latvia now) where they married about 1915 and at the height of the
Russian Revolution, moved to Moscow. They had a son Yuri Levi and then
divorced in the mid 1930’s. The son married and had two children (a son
and daughter, names unknown). Then early in the war, Yuri was killed.
The son, Katya’s grandson, joined the Communist Party and after that there was
no more contact between Katya and her siblings in America. She met Billy
(Barbara Druss Dibner) on a street in Moscow when Billy was traveling and
handed her all the letters she had received from their father Isaac, much of
which chronicles his attempt to orchestrate her return to the US.
Of course, Grandpa’s family is
German….
These remote family ties made me
that much less callous to the history seeping through Poland. Even upon first
impression driving into Krakow, the streets seemed dismal, quiet and ridden with
the remnants of oppression.
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| ...but by day, the streets turned out to be gorgeous! |
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| The center square in Krakow |
This trip was a bit of an emotional
rollercoaster. We spent the first day touring, beginning with the Wawel Castle
on the outskirts of Krakow. This castle was pieced together throughout a number
of centuries, leaving the architecture of the Wawel Castle in a state of
identity crisis. Bricks mixed with limestone and traditional towers competing
with copper spires make the Wawel Castle one of the most interesting, yet confusing,
architectural compilations I have seen in Europe. However, it is where the
kings of Poland were once crowned and is a historical icon defining Krakow.
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The Wawel Castle (Note: The eclecticism of architecture)
This structure was even based off of Italian influence! |
Our tour guide turned out to be a
pretty good storyteller, and I was swooning over her elaborate tales (My
mythology minor tendencies really came out to play.) One of my favorite myths was that of Krakow's Wawel dragon. Once upon a time... Beneath the Wawel castle, during the reign of King Krak, a dragon once lingered. Not only did he linger; he pillaged Polish villages, stampeded across the countryside, and wreaked havoc upon innocent civilians. Each month, he would demand the sacrifice of one woman to quell his hunger for human
flesh. As the number of women in Krakow drew fewer and fewer as each day passed,
the dragon demanded the princess of Krakow to be his next victim. Of course, a
number of suitors flocked to the rescue, only to meet their fiery demise.
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| Tomb of the 'quartered' priest |
Fortuitously, one suitor (who happened to be the assistant to a poor cobbler) was
cunning enough to disguise a cauldron filled with sulphur as a sheep. He fed the
“sheep” to the dragon, which left the dragon with a feeling of unquenchable thirst. He began to guzzle water from the Vistula river; he drank, and he drank, and he drank. Finally, in that instant, the dragon exploded! (Highly
plausible, right? Definitely Myth Busters material.) From that day forth, the
Wawel Castle and the city of Krakow were saved from the fiery talons of the
Krakow dragon. Today, pieces of dragon memorabilia grace the windows of
souvenir shops throughout Krakow in commemoration, and a statue also stands where the dragon was rumored to have resided.
Many stories about the Wawel Castle
are religion based. Another notable tale is about the death of a high priest who allegedly
had his body quartered as punishment for a religious crime. After his death,
four brothers began to fight for rule over Poland as heirs to the throne. They
all were in attendance of the priest’s funeral, and they curiously decided
to open the priest's tomb. Surprisingly, they recovered the high priest’s body intact! The
brothers saw his unharmed body as a sign that Poland should be ruled as a whole
rather than divided into four... and so it happened that way. Since the
beginning of time, mythology as served as explanation for commonplace events,
and blurs the line between fact and fantasy; despite the ratio of reality to fairy
tale, mythology leaves me perpetually infatuated.
Beginning with Auschwitz was
unsettling for numerous reasons. We entered the camp to the famously disturbing
phrase strewn across the main gate: “Arbeit
macht frei” meaning, “Work makes you
free.” The dirt paths that gridlocked the grounds were pounded solid by the
millions of feet that trudged down these walkways a century before. Small brick
townhouses, all of which served their own uniquely morbid purpose in the 1940’s,
were positioned in perfectly parallel lines. A chill-evoking thought danced
across my mind: The epicenter of Jewish
genocide looks strangely similar to a summer camp.
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| "WORK MAKES YOU FREE." |
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| Electric fences lining the premesis |
We all know the story of the
Holocaust. The facts are clear, and the numbers on paper are unfathomably
large; but what struck me most were the subtleties. A set of lonely gallows,
standing shyly beyond the main gate; Housing complexes with surprisingly
inviting red brick facades; A crematorium, camouflaged in the side of a small
hill, with rooms smaller than those in my own home. This is where Nazis had ostensibly slaughtered thousands at a time?
This is the Auschwitz I had heard
terrors about?
Conversely, Auschwitz-Birkenau
lived up to these rhetorically inquisitive terrors. The Auschwitz-Birkenau
complex was a monstrosity, harboring more than 1.5 million captives in its
lifetime. The barracks stretched for miles – some decimated, and others intact
– lined with barbed wire electric fences. Gargantuan gas chambers, purgatories and
crematoriums were completely destroyed, with chunks of grey boulders strewn
across the pit of land where they once towered. A long, rolling train track
divided the camp in half – a stage for all to see the droves of prisoners that
were exterminated immediately after exiting their boxcar. To think that the
passengers bought a ticket to their
death still irks me.
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| Watch towers lining the fence |
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| Decimated purgatories |
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| In Memoriam. |
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| The train entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau |
The contrasts between the two camps
are stark, yet equally grim in their own accord; these are the types of
memories that create a vacuous void in your heart. There is no way to match the
feeling than simply experiencing. There is no way to describe the forlorn
feeling of walking for miles down an open train track on a gorgeous autumn day
-- in the middle of a concentration camp.
…And as I battled with these
fleeting and frequent feelings, plodding down an endless railroad, I looked up
to see Angelina Jolie walking towards me.
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| Shocked? I was. |
Taken aback, I snapped a shaky shot
of her with my new analog camera, adding yet another twist to the array of
feelings that had been homogenizing inside of me. I passed her four other times
that afternoon: not a bad start to my first photojournalism assignment, I’d
say.
That
was when I threw in the towel. After seeing arguably the most haunting
historical site on earth, followed by seeing arguably the most famous celebrity
on earth, I was emotionally spent. I have yet to develop any of the photos from
that afternoon, but I can imagine they are just as striking as the images still
inculcated in my mind.
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| At the end of the train tracks at Auschwitz-Birkenau |
Poland
was just as it sounds: overwhelming, bizarre, and a bit depressing. Believe it
or not, it was the catalyst to an even more stressful week ahead of me – but I
would never trade it for another experience. After all, the feelings have
subsided quite a bit. I have gotten past my mid-semester lull, past the
overwhelming feelings of Auschwitz, and past the anxiety of midterms; I have
moved on to a new feeling that I like to call, tranquilo.
One
of my best friends opportunistically mentioned this word to me yesterday. We
were catching up, and it’s like she could sense my stress – so she started to
tell me about tranquilo, the way that
Spaniards live life. The phrase translates in her small town of San Sebastian
to ‘calm’ or ‘tranquil’ in English. She spends her days living at a slower pace,
where siestas are encouraged, people love with their words and enjoy their days
in peace and simplicity.
…So
on a whim, I booked my train to San Sebastian. Sixteen hours ago, my weekend
was wide open for adventure; Twelve hours of travel later, my heart is yearning
for my own small slice of tranquilo.
Krakow, it’s been fun
– but VIVA ESPANA!
