Poland
It all begins with an idea.
Even those of Polish ancestry don’t visit Poland. History is too heavy and stark here, chasing the present and making the future seem ominous. Buildings with appalling histories can be visited, such as an orphanage where Nazi soldiers threw children out the windows, shooting them before they hit the ground. Squashed apartment blocks remain from the time of Stalin, positioned in an intention to disorient and built with a prescribed dreariness to suck the lives out of occupants.
Sandwiched between Germany and Russia was less than ideal for the Poles, who carried the weight of annihilation and a rebirth into nothingness as best they could, with most of their intelligentsia snuffed out. Only 1,300 remained from 1.3 million residents in Warsaw – and one out of five lost their lives nationally. It’s a land with surprisingly fluid borders, with the Ukraine blurring and blending, and astonishingly beautiful Gdansk a connection to Baltic lands. It all resulted in a complex knot of geopolitical yearnings and frustrations that blew out the minds of more than one generation, leaving the country fragile, politically illogical, and spent.
For this precise reason, it is intriguing to visit Poland. The zloty will take you far, and you’ll discover you’re in Europe after all, with steep winding stairs to exquisite church towers, piekarnias offering lovely breads, retro commie design shops, and the iris gardens of Wrocław. Hobbled neighborhoods of blue-collar workers beckon with a crooked finger, luring you into courtyards where altars to the Madonna await, stunning in their dilapidated grandeur.
Banks can’t finance development here in case someone claims the land that was re-plotted after the devastation of the war. Who owns this country that has outlawed Communism? Who claims its soul? Is anyone genuinely interested in the Jewish resurgence when the entire population was zeroed out? And what was solidarity for, in a time when unions carry no weight in any corner of the world? Go visit Poland, and ponder this for yourself.
Here’s my photo essay on Poland.