Beauty and Horror

It's one of those rainy gray days here in Krakow. My pants are soaked from walking through the puddles. It goes nicely with the sore throat and cough I have acquired.

Zakopane is nestled in the mountains in the southern part of Poland. Really, the best way to describe it is "Polish Banff." It's definitely not as suffocating as Banff town and the Tatra mountains are smaller, but Zakopane is the mecca for Polish skiing. Pretty much everyone in town rents out the extra rooms in their house. People stand on the street corners with signs advertising rooms. As soon as we stepped off the bus, a grandmotherly lady in a green jacket made our acquaintance and after telling us the cost per night by writing in my hand with her finger, we followed her to our home for the next couple of days. We had our own little room complete with a bathroom and a television set. Oh, the wonders of Polish television. We saw Third Watch dubbed into Polish with a male monotone voice doing all the dialogue. We also had the privilege of watching a Spanish soap opera that centered around a cowboy bar. One night, Mer stayed up to watch football (soccer to you North Americans) while I slept.

I already felt the sore throat invading my neck, but still we hiked up a little mountain on the edge of town. Most people take the little tram to the top, but we hiked instead. It was Mer's first mountain, and even though it was really only a foothill, it was pretty cool. The leaves are turning so in the midst of the conifers, you can see red and yellow. The houses and cabins are scattered throughout the valley with their colorful roofs. Then you look up and see beautiful mountains. It was a very nice view. On the way back down as we braced ourselves from the cold, we wandered past little cottages with children riding bicycles and grandmas walking. It felt so good to be out of the city.

On Thursday the 13th, we rode a cable car to the top of Kasprowy Wierch, the mountain from which several hikes are possible. The ride had two legs so midway we changed cars. Once at the top, we started hiking the red trail. We noticed a regular series of markers with a red top and the letter P on the north side. An "S" was on the south. They were the border markers between Poland and Slovakia. The border guards don't patrol the mountain path which zigzags between the two nations. We paused for quick pictures on the border, and then continued east, sometimes gazing at the Slovakian mountains and other times at the Polish ones. The trail was a little steep at times, but all the fellow hikers were friendly. Too bad we don't speak Polish.

When we were about a third done the loop of our intended hike, we arrived at Mt. Swinica. Ominous clouds were rolling in from the north and soon snowflakes were falling on our faces. Some kind good Samaritans shared the weather report with us and encouraged us to return back to the tram station. I was pretty disappointed to be unable to complete the hike, but considering our lack of gear and general health, it was a good thing to turn back. We had overpriced tea in the chalet and headed down the mountain in a water-spotted cable car.

Snow. I hadn't been snowed on in a couple of years. In Taiwan, snow is rare, almost a fairy tale. Sometimes it snows in the highest mountains so families race in their cars to see and touch snow for a fleeting moment before it melts. Having seen snow is a source of pride for children. As a few meagre flakes collected on my fleece, I felt the rapture of a Taiwanese child at his first snow. Each individual flake is a little different. It's white and beautiful. I love snow.

But I hate cold now. Unfortunately, the two go together.

Friday, we shopped in the local market and headed back to Krakow. There is a section of town here called Nowa Huta, literally New Steelworks. It is one of two existing socialist designed neighborhoods. Focussed new a once gigantic steel factory, wide tree lined avenues line carefully planned buildings and areas. Things were designed to be safe for children and convenient. It's a good idea, except it is so depressing with its concrete block buildings that vary a little, but mainly all look the same. Years of pollution have taken their toll, making everything look dark and gross. We visited this area for about three quarters of an hour, and then we had enough. Interestingly, this socialist-planned area was a stronghold of the solidarity movement. One of Pope John Paul II's contributions to the community was his lobbying for a church to be erected in their neighborhood. Eventually the communists allowed it.

Before I forget, some things I forgot:
1. In Berlin beside the Brandenburg Gate, we saw an interesting musical ensemble - American Indians playing Abba on panflutes.
2. In Krakow, the street cleaners seem to want to kill us. A tractor pulling a high pressure washer will speed down pedestrian walkways with no warnings. And there is really no place to hide. We had to run away twice in one night. Now whenever I walk, I keep looking behind me to make sure the street cleaner isn't stalking me again.
3. Polish people really love weiner dogs.

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This is what the LORD says:
"A voice is heard in Ramah,
mourning and great weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because her children are no more." Jeremiah 31:15

This verse kept echoing through my ears yesterday because yesterday we went to the town of Oswiecim. You know it better by its German name - Auschwitz.

At least one and a half million people - mostly Jews - died in this Nazi death factory. People were gassed. People were shot. People were treated as less than animals. Children and men and women were used as guinea pigs in sadistic science experiments. I start to feel sick every time I think about it. All day yesterday I walked around with a pit in my stomach. It was the same pit I had when I learned of the magnitude of last years tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

Auschwitz I was put near the town of Oswiecim because of its location on transport routes and because of the old Polish military barracks that were vacant. It is haunting because when looking at the buildings, it doesn't seem like a very bad place. A collection of red brick buildings stand in rows, in almost a collegiate feel. But then, you go inside the buildings and you see the displays chronicling the horrors and then Auschwitz seems real. We saw two tonnes of human hair that were intended to be used in the textile industry. We saw the labelled suitcases of people who believed the Nazis were giving them a new place to live. We saw the empty cans that once held Xylcon B, the ammunition of the atrocious gas chambers. We saw pictures of emaciated bodies. Along the walls in the hallways, pictures of the victims hang on the wall. It makes one's blood run cold to realize that all of them are dead. We saw the rooms where they were crammed in like animals, lying on a mixture of straw and excrement. A thousand people were stuffed into a single barrack.

We stood at the wall once used by the firing squad. We walked through the basement of Block 11 where the Nazis first tried out the gas chamber idea, but had the formula too weak and the people died slow agonizing deaths worse than those who died in the normal gas chambers. There was cell 18 where Father Kolbe voluntarily starved to save the life of a family man. In one of the cells, a prisoner had carved pictures on the wall with his fingernails. The crucifix and the Madonna are still there and lend hope to the bleak history of the place.

Electrified barbed-wire fences line the perimeter. One of the Nazis had said the only way to leave was through the chimney. Our guide actually took us into the first gas chamber. A cold concrete room which the people were led to believe was a communal shower. I saw the claw marks on the walls of dying men, women, and children. Thousands of people died in that room. Thousands left through the chimney. Why am I so luck to just walk away and get on a bus?

We also went to Auschwitz II - Birkenau. It is about three kilometers away, much larger and much more imposing. At its highest capacity, it held one hundred thousand people. A lot of it was destroyed by Nazis who knew they had lost the war and tried to save their skins by hiding their sins. The brick chimneys which were never used because the prisoners didn't get heat in winter are all that remain of most of the wooden barracks. We stood on the train tracks at the unloading dock where the doctor would arbitrarily look at people and send them to death in the gas chamber or to death in the work camp. Once people took their final steps there. Now tourists stroll and take pictures. We saw the ruins of the larger gas chambers.

Most of the day, I felt numb. Sometimes I would cry as the realization of so much death and destruction hit me.It doesn't seem conceivable that such atrocities are possible. Who could be so inhumane? So bloodthirsty and savage? I could write so much more about the awful things I saw and the awful things I heard about. But for my own sanity, I will end with this. I can't keep writing about it.

Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, an Italian president, made this comment in 1996 about Auschwitz: "When man forgets God so much." If he is right, I never want to forget God.

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Today is our last full day in Krakow. We split up for the morning and I headed for a market before hitting a museum. Art museums are a kind of oasis for me. Sometimes I feel as worshipful in an art museum as I do in a church or in the mountains. Today I went to the Jan Matejko house. One of Krakow's native sons, Matejko is a well known Polish painter from the 19th century. He did portraits of a lot of well-to-do Poles, but his passion seemed to be more historical paintings. It had a lot of displays about his every day life, and not a ton of paintings, but I enjoyed it and I enjoyed it all the more because it was free.

Somewhere I read that Poland is the real birthplace of the bagel. On a lot of corners in Krakow, you'll see little carts full of big 40 cent bagels. We had lunch at a bagel sandwich place before seeing the remaining sites in Wawel castle. We toured through the Cathedral. Tour groups stood around looking bored and not listening to their shouting guides. For a place of worship, it just felt like a tourist attraction, which I guess it really is now. We saw the really large Sigimund's Bell and wandered through the Royal tombs. I enjoyed reading about St. Jadwiga, a fourteenth century woman who was King of Poland. (Yes, the sign said King, not Queen.) She is credited with making a big contribution to the conversion of Poland to Christianity. Her relics are in the cathedral.

We also wandered through the rain to see the dragon's den. It's a cave on Wawel hill. The legend goes that once a dragon lived there and no one could slay him. A king offered his daughter's hand in marriage to whoever could kill the dragon. A clever man knew he couldn't slay the dragon in a conventional way. Too many people had died trying. So he killed a sheep, stuffed its body with sulfur and left it at the dragon's doorstep. The dragon took the bait, and when he felt the fire in his stomach, starting drinking water. He drank so much water that he blew up. So the man won the princess's hand.

We also went into St. Mary's Basilica with its brightly colored walls. It has a very large altar at the front, billed as the biggest altar of its kind in Europe. It is hard to describe the color scheme as anything but technicolor. I doubt that any of our churches at home would copy the design, but in this cathedral, it's quite beautiful.

This has been a very big year in my life. I have accomplished many of my childhood goals. I have seen a real Panda bear. I own a pair of Dutch wooden shoes which I can wear. And today as a belated birthday gift, Mer bought me my very first Matrushka. I am not sure on spelling, but they are those dolls where you open one and another one is inside. There are ten altogether in my set. It's really quite exciting and I'm sure I'm drive Meridith crazy with my constant playing with it.

We had pierogies for supper at our favorite place. Tomorrow, we will leave Krakow and all of Poland behind. And I'm sad to say goodbye.