Charm and Horror

Cracow and Auschwitz, August 21-24

Cracow is charming. The capital of Poland until 1609, it reflects both its Polish heritage and international influences introduced under the Habsburgs from the 18th Century until the 20th. The city’s huge main square, the Rynek Glowny, contains a wealth of fantastic art and architecture, especially St. Mary’s Church with its famous Veit Stoss altarpiece, which we watched a little nun open (with some difficulty as the doors are massive) to reveal its magnificently carved interior portraying the Dormition of the Virgin with Apostles who look suspiciously like Cracow townspeople. The church’s exterior is dominated by its crown-shaped tower, from which a trumpeter in the Middle Ages is said to have sounded a warning of an approaching Tatar raid but was cut down by a Tatar arrow before he could finish his bugle call. Today his heroism is commemorated every hour by a bugler on the tower who abruptly stops his call at the precise moment when his legendary predecessor was supposed to have been hit.


St. Mary's Church on Rynek Glowny


Sukinnice (cloth hall) on Rynek Glowny, Cracow

The city was well filled with tourists, who were welcomed with free music and dance performances in the Rynek Glowny, excellent but reasonably priced meals (with vodka, of course), and well organized arrangements for visiting Cracow’s many tourist attractions. We particularly enjoyed touring Wawel Hill, where the castle and cathedral stand side by side. The cathedral is Poland’s Westminster Abbey with burial sites of the country’s kings and other notables, including Tadeusz Kosciuszko of U.S. Revolutionary War fame. (This church was, of course, the seat of John Paul II when he was Archbishop of Cracow, and the city is full of plaques honoring his memory.) The castle contains outstanding tapestries and the remarkable “Heads Room,” an audience hall featuring carved heads of 16th Century burghers reputedly placed on the ceiling to remind the monarch that his actions were under scrutiny. However, the best part of the Wawel for younger visitors is a large cave, reputed to be the den of the dragon Krak; long deceased, he is represented by a fire-breathing statue.


Polish folk dancers on Rynek Glowny, Cracow


Wawel Hill from our hotel


Cathedral and palace, Wawel Hill


Gargoyles on Cracow cathedral


Krak and friends

The Jewish heritage of Cracow gained considerable attention through “Schindler’s List,” which Steven Spielberg filmed largely in the city. We toured both Kazimierz, the traditional Jewish quarter, and Podgorze, where the entire Jewish population was forcibly resettled in 1941, and visited several of the small privately run museums. However, we came away sad that the museums had not pooled their efforts, for none does an adequate job of explaining what happened in Cracow during the Holocaust. We were impressed, nonetheless, by a monument of empty chairs on the main square of Podgorze and surprised to find that the building of Oskar Schindler’s “Emalia” factory is still standing.


Jewish memorial in Cracow


Oskar Schindler's factory building in Cracow

Our last day was spent at Auschwitz, 70 kilometers to the west of Cracow. Although we knew the history and had seen many films about the Holocaust, both commercial and documentary, nothing prepared us for the emotions we experienced. Above all, we were overwhelmed by the scale at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the biggest installation in the complex, which covers some 175 hectares (425 acres) and housed some 100,000 people in appalling conditions at peak capacity. However, most new arrivals went directly to the gas chambers and crematoria, which killed and burned 60,000 people a day at the height of the slaughter. The men’s barracks were made of wood, which was burned or dismantled when the camp ceased to function so all that remains is an enormous field of brick chimneys for the huts’ inadequate heating systems. The gas chambers and crematoria were dynamited, but the destruction was so incomplete that the outlines of the facilities remain visible. Appallingly, as we learned from our guide, the human ash from the crematoria was generally given to local farmers for fertilizer. Since between one and a half and two million people were killed there, she explained, the whole area is a giant columbarium.


Main gate at Auschwitz I ("Arbeit Macht Frei")


Main gate and railroad tracks, Auschwitz-Birkenau


Site of men's barracks, Auschwitz-Birkenau


Dynamited gas chamber and crematorium at Auschwitz-Birkenau

East to Kiev . . . Then West to Lviv

Ukraine, August 17-20

We rose early Thursday morning in Gura Humorului, Romania, to begin a drive of more than 600 kilometers to Kiev, Ukraine. The border presented no problems, but we missed a turn in Chernovitsy, the capital of Austrian Bucovina before World War I, and were treated to a city tour on its cobblestone streets. The rest of the trip was unexceptional but tedious as we struggled to pass one truck after another on the two-lane highway, which ran through fields, woods, villages, and a few cities on the Ukrainian steppe. After 10 hours on the road, we were happy to reach the Hotel Rus in Kiev, a late Soviet-era hostelry renovated to the point of acceptability.

Kiev is a beautiful city, built on hills overlooking the Dnepr River. We enjoyed its greenery while walking to the Pecherska Lavra, the city’s famous 20-hectare caves monastery, which is again in operation under the authority of the Russian Orthodox Patriarch in Moscow. Used as burial sites for the monks beginning in the 11th Century, the caves can now be visited by the faithful and the curious, who carry candles into the dark, narrow passages to see the monks’ shrouded, sometimes mummified remains. We toured one section of the caves but found the crush of visitors overwhelming and the candles downright dangerous.


Pecherska Lavra and Dnepr River

The aboveground sights of the Lavra are generally restorations, including the Dormition Cathedral, where rebuilding continues, but we were impressed by the 11th-Century Troitskaya (Trinity Gate) Church, spared in the war, which has a Baroque interior executed at the time Catherine the Great was bringing western European influences to her empire. In this respect Troitskaya is an interesting contrast to the Cathedral of St. Sophia, located in central Kiev, and easily the most impressive architectural monument we saw. There the Westernizers placed a Baroque shell over the exterior but left undisturbed the 11th Century Byzantine interior with its fantastic mosaics and frescoes. Some might call St. Sophia a metaphor for this part of Europe.


Dormition Cathedral and bell tower, Pecherska Lavra, Kiev


Trinity Gate Church, Pecherska Lavra, Kiev


St. Sophia's Cathedral, Kiev

We also visited secular Kiev, including Independence Square, where demonstrators from Pora and other groups were still displaying banners supporting the ideals of the Orange Revolution and warning Putin “to keep your hands off Ukraine.” Seeking some nightlife, we ate at a funky restaurant featuring a trumpet-accordion-keyboard trio that performed everything from modern jazz to Ukrainian folk songs. We were especially appreciative when they played a Glenn Miller tune from “Sun Valley Serenade.”


Independence Square, Kiev


Trio at Chasing Two Hares restaurant, Kiev

On Saturday we headed west to Lviv on another tedious drive that became all the more annoying when the road surface deteriorated. Fortunately, we were delighted by our destination, the modern, immaculately clean Hotel Eney, a small inn that reminded us more of Austria than of the former USSR. The similarity is not surprising, perhaps, for Lviv was the administrative center of Austrian Galicia in Habsburg times as reflected in its Vienna-style opera house and other urban architecture.


Opera House, Lviv


Lviv street scene

Clearly, however, the city’s showpiece is the Market Square, which features buildings from the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The square is now under renovation, and when finished, it will rival the restored pedestrianized areas of Bratislava and Cracow. As we wandered through the downtown area on Sunday morning, we were struck by the number of churches—Roman Catholic, Uniate, Orthodox, and a few Protestant, as befits this cultural crossroads—and the numbers of people listening outside as the services were piped through a PA system.


Market Square, Lviv