writebrained, rightbrained

Krakow, Poland

I have been diligently taking photos for the past week, but not so diligently posting none of them.  Our tour with Tucan Tours has been fantastic so far - we love Manuel, our tour leader!  It’s fantastic to not have to worry about transportation or hotel details, and to get a few hours introduction to each new city.  Then we usually split off from our group of ten (mostly Australian) fellow travelers and do our own thing.  I’m going to divide my Krakow post: my first impressions and what I learned about the Jewish history of Krakow on the second day of our visit.

Krakow, on first impression, is a city of contrasts: old and new.  Wonderfully preserved Polish architecture next to young, modern art.  The oldest indoor shopping mall in the world, next to an outdoor jazz festival.  Horse drawn carriages decorated for the tourists, and the driver, busily chatting away on his cell phone.  Graffiti and a very rich, ancient Jewish history.  It’s a university town and full of artists, who work as street performers for tourists during the day, and enliven the nighttime cafe culture rich with live bands and art everywhere.  This is hopefully reflected in my photos below….

As some of you may already know, Krakow has an old and distinguished Jewish history as a center of learning and scholarship.  Our hotel was on the edge of the Kazimierz district of Krakow, which had historically been the old Jewish quarter.  After learning about the history, this neighborhood felt a little divided.  On one side were cute galleries and cafes, but it was also a little like a ghost town, because what had once been a crowded, thriving village was now the home mainly to a few cafes and museums commemorating the area’s history and mostly catering to tourists.  This was striking especially in the Kazimierz main square.

On the second day of our visit, we hoped to visit the Schindler Factory museum (from the Spielberg film), but it was unfortunately closed on the first Monday of every month.  Instead, we went to a moving photo exhibition called “Traces of Memory” at the Museum Galicia, focusing on the history of Jewish culture and people in the area surrounding Krakow, including a remarkable segment on the legacy after World War II.  It was a perfect precursor to our trip planned to Auschwitz that afternoon.  The film “Schindler’s List” shows the tragedy of the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto.  I learned that of the 70,000 Jews in Krakow before the war, fewer than 1 in 10 survived.  It was really sad to learn about the vibrant Jewish culture and community in Krakow, which had been virtually erased and dispersed, like ashes scattered to the wind.

I visited the old synagogue Remu, which was the home of a well-known Jewish rabbi and intellectual and is still in use.  I took some photos of the wall next to the synagogue’s large, restored cemetery.  Remarkably, this wall has been made of the fragments of gravestones from the many desecrated Jewish cemeteries scattered all over Poland.  I thought it was a stunning and visual reminder of what had been destroyed here.  Below that is the entrance to the Remu Synagogue (considered to bring good luck.)

The photo exhibit, Traces of Memory, will be visiting Boston sometime this fall.   That afternoon, we went with a tour guide to Auschwitz, which I’ll write about in my next post.

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