Month: February 2022

Krakow and the Wieliczka Salt Mines

Krakow and the Wieliczka Salt Mines

The plane—Ryanair, unfortunately—landed well after dark. My brother and I quickly extracted some złoty from an ATM and then got into a taxi. The driver was a friend of our Airbnb host. Quite polite and charming, he asked us about where we were from, and a halting conversation began.

“Man, it’s really cold,” I observed, lamely, during a lull.

“Yes,” he said in his thick accent. “In Poland, we have winter.”

Indeed, he was right: it was winter. In fact, this was the last weekend of February 2020, right before the pandemic turned the world on its head. Though I was blissfully unaware of it at the time, this trip would prove to be my last gasp of “normalcy”—and, at least until now, my final European trip outside of Spain. But at the time, I only noticed that it was awfully cold compared to Madrid.

We had left for Poland as soon as we had gotten out of work. As a result, by the time we made it into our room, it was past midnight, and we only had the energy to crawl into bed and pass out.

The next day we awoke, dazed and still a little cold, ready to explore Krakow.

But first, breakfast. For this, we stopped by a food stand and got some obwarzanki krakowskie, the so-called Krakow bagel. Unlike the bagels I am used to, this version is thinner, saltier, and crunchier—almost like a cross between a bagel and a soft pretzel. Very tasty and affordable. After this wholesome repast, we wandered toward Krakow’s old center.

Like many cities in Europe, Krakow has a history that stretches back to medieval times, and beyond. And like many beautiful cities, a certain set of circumstances conspired to build up and preserve the place. The first necessary step is to enjoy a golden age of artistic creation—either through commerce, or by being the seat of political power, or preferably both—and it just so happens that Poland’s so-called golden age occurred when Krakow was the capital of the country. Then, importantly, political power shifted elsewhere (to Warsaw), leaving many impressive buildings to weather the centuries, bereft of their original importance. Finally, and crucially, Krakow was lucky enough to survive the desolation of modern warfare. While Warsaw was blown to smithereens, Krakow remained relatively unscathed during the Second World War. Thus it is that the city has the look and charm of a medieval capital.

The first thing to catch our eyes was the Grunwald Monument. This is an enormous equestrian statue of the Polish king Władysław II Jagiełło (don’t ask me to pronounce it), who forged an alliance with Lithuania and defeated the Teutons (Germans) in the battle of Grunwald. This epochal battle, which took place in 1410, is said to mark the beginning of Poland’s golden age; and the monument was erected 500 years later, in 1910, to commemorate this symbol of Polish pride. Unsurprisingly, when the Nazis invaded, they could not abide the sight of a monument to a German defeat; so they did what Nazis do, and destroyed it. The monument was rebuilt in 1976—and may it be forever a symbol of Poles triumphing over Germans.

Nearby is the barbican. This is a kind of fortress that once formed an important part of the city’s defenses. Though we did not go inside, a single glance was enough to reveal an imposing and, in a way, a beautiful structure—with gothic spires jutting out over the solid brick walls. I would hate to have been the poor soldier tasked with capturing it. The original medieval walls are also preserved nearby, which encircle the old center of Krakow. We proceeded through the gate, and down a long avenue—Floriańska Street—filled with touristy shops and American fast food, until we reached the Rynek Główny, which is just Polish for “Main Square.” It is a grand, open space, filled with pigeons, tourists, and stately buildings.

Prominent among these is the Town Hall Tower, a gothic clock tower that—as its name suggests—once formed a part of the town hall. For better or worse, the rest of the town hall was demolished in 1820 in order to open up the Main Square. Much more modest in stature is the Church of St. Adalbert, a relatively small church with modest decorations inside. Yet it is distinguished for being one of the oldest stone churches in the country, having been built in the 11th century. Nearby is the Adam Mickiewicz Monument, a large sculptural assembly that may be the best place to meet somebody if you want an easy-to-find landmark. Adam Mickiewicz, by the way, can perhaps be considered the national bard of Poland. (One day, I hope to read his epic poem, Pan Tadeusz.) Right in the center of the square is Cloth Hall, a lovely Renaissance building that once served as a kind of medieval stock exchange, though for spices and fabrics instead of stocks and bonds. Nowadays it is a touristy market.

Yet the loveliest building of the bunch, for me, is St. Mary’s Basilica. Like the cathedral at Chartres, this basilica has two unmatching towers, which rise splendidly over the main square. The interior is even more impressive than the relatively unadorned façade. Pride of place undoubtedly belongs to the magnificent wooden altarpiece, carved by one Veit Stross. As you may have guessed from his name, Stross was a German; yet his masterpiece has—ironically, perhaps—become an icon of the Polish identity. Even more ironically, this artistic treasure was stolen by the Nazis, only to be found in the basement of the Nuremberg Castle (a city, as it happens, where Stross also lived and worked). Passing over the other lovely works of art in the basilica—most notably, Jan Matejko’s murals—I must mention the hejnał mariacki, a bugle call played every hour, twenty-four hours a day, from the taller tower. It is a beautiful melody that ends awkwardly and abruptly, in honor of a bugler who was, supposedly, shot in the throat by an arrow during an attack by the Mongols, in the 13th century.

The altar was being restored when I visited.

Next we made our way to another edge of the old town, to a hill overlooking the river Vistula. This is Wawel, a large building complex that includes a castle and a cathedral. It is an architecturally jumbled place, with buildings from every major stage of Poland’s history. One highlight is the arcades in the Italian Renaissance-style courtyard, constructed under the reign of Sigismund the Old (1506 – 1548). This old Sigismund, along with the younger one, are buried in a resplendent chapel in the cathedral. Yet old as he was, Sigismund was not the first king to be buried in this august place, that distinction belonging to Władysław I the Elbow-high, so called because of his short stature. This cathedral, as it happens, also has two unmatching towers; and while not as beautiful as St. Mary’s, Wawel Cathedral makes up for it with its many royal bodies.

Leaving the old town now, we visited the nearby neighborhood of Kazimierz. This part of town is now most famous—partly thanks to the movie Schindler’s List, which was filmed here—for its Jewish culture. But Kazimierz was never exclusively Jewish, as you can see from the many churches, such as the impressively pointy Corpus Christi Basilica.

The Old Synagogue.

Though this part of the city was looted and destroyed by the Nazis, and then further devasted by the Red Army, many examples of Jewish culture survive. Foremost among these is the Old Synagogue, which is part temple and part fortress, with thick walls built to protect those inside. Constructed in the 15th century, it is the oldest synagogue in the country. Aside from the many synagogues and Jewish restaurants, there are also many reminders of the oppression suffered by this community under the Nazis. A plaque affixed to a stone invites onlookers to meditate on the tens of thousands of Jews from Krakow killed during the Second World War. A short walk across the Vistula brings you to another monument, this one consisting of empty metal chairs, which commemorates the former Jewish ghetto (the Nazis forced the Jewish population to leave Kazimierz and live in this ghetto, where conditions were so bad that most did not survive).

Nearby is the famous factory of Oskar Schindler. If you have seen the movie (I actually haven’t, come to think of it), you know the story: Schindler, a member of the Nazi Party, dedicated enormous resources and energy in order to keep the Jewish workers of his factory safe, thus saving the lives of over 1,000 Jews. The factory is now part memorial, part museum. You can see Schindler’s old desk, examples of the enamelware they produced, as well as exhibits on the history of Krakow—including a good deal of information about World War II and the Holocaust. It is an ideal place to learn about some of the more recent history of the city.

To learn about some more distant history, the place to go is the Rynek Underground. As its name suggests, this is a subterranean museum, to be found below the Main Square (it took us a few minutes to locate the entrance). This museum is situated in an archeological site, where the remains of the medieval city are still visible. Rather than just letting the old bricks and rocks do the talking, however, the curators opted for holograms, wherein daily scenes of medieval life (recreated by actors) are projected onto the scene. I am not sure that it was particularly educational, but it was interesting. My favorite part of the museum, ironically, was near the end of the visit, where a documentary of the history of Krakow is simply played on repeat. It was quite well-made, I thought, and taught me more than the actual exhibits had.

This fairly well did it for our time in Krakow. Yet the Rynek Underground did not prove to be the most interesting thing we saw below the earth that trip.

Wieliczka Salt Mines

The train from Krakow dropped us in the town of Wieliczka in a little under an hour. Having a bit of time to kill before our timed entry, we went on a short stroll of the town. It is quite a pretty place, with brightly colored buildings spread out in the valley—though not particularly exciting. Surely, few tourists would go out of their way to visit this place if not for the enormous mine below the ground.

Finally, it was time for us to enter. For reasons that soon become obvious, it is only possible to visit the mines in a group. For one, the descent to the main level of the mine is long; and there are so many passages that it would be easy to get hopelessly disoriented and lost. For another thing, there are quite a number of precipitous chasms that the unwary traveler could easily trip into. In a word, the Wieliczka Salt Mines are big—over 300 meters (1,000 feet) below the earth, and whose chambers and tunnels, if laid end to end, would cover the same distance between Krakow and Warsaw. The guided tour covers a mere fraction of this enormous extent. Thus, to visit you need a guide.

Descending into the mine.

Now, considering that I did not even know beforehand that salt is mined, you can imagine that this experience was a revelation to me. The walls of the tunnels are brownish gray, nothing like the crystalline white familiar to cooks. This salt is truly ancient, having been formed in seabeds eons ago. Through the churning of the earth’s tectonic plates, this oceanic salt has ended up many hundreds of miles from the nearest coast. Apparently sick of bland cabbage and potatoes, Poles have been mining salt here since the 13th century. (The smaller Bochnia Salt Mine, located nearby, is slightly older.) The salt is mined much as anything else might be: by tunneling into rich veins, extracting as much as possible with picks and shovels, and then hurling it back up to the surface where (I presume) it can be processed into something more attractive than its raw, rocky state. For much of its history this work was carried out by man-power alone; but eventually horses were brought down into the tunnels, to perform some of the drudgery in literally abysmal conditions.

Nowadays the horses are just models.

One cannot discuss the history of these mines without mention of Casimir III the Great. One of the most important and pivotal rulers in the country’s history (he ruled from 1333 to 1370), he was instrumental in the development of these mines. This was no disinterested gesture, however, as up to a third of the royal revenues were derived from salt. In the medieval world, salt was big business. Another famous name that must be mentioned is that of Nicolaus Copernicus. (That is the latinized version of his name; in Polish—his country of birth—his name is Mikołaj Kopernik.) He is the first known person to visit the mines as a tourist, and he was followed by many more over the centuries. Thus, even though salt production stopped in 1996, Wieliczka is still a gold mine—pardon the pun—of tourism, with over a million visitors per year. 

A salty last supper.

Yet the reason that Wieliczka became so popular is not because tunnels and salt are so fascinating. It is, simply, a beautiful place. Over the years, talented miners have carved works of art into the walls—humorous statues, religious figures, historical personages. There are four entire chapels, one of them as impressive as a cathedral, complete with a chandelier adorned with salt crystals. Another highlight is an underground lake, eerily blue in the artificial light of the cavern, whose water is so saturated with salt that it is probably quite toxic. And then there are the massive scaffolds that seem to go endlessly on into the bowels of the earth.

Yes, that is salt.

This fairly well wraps up my trip to Poland. But I would be remiss if I ended this post without mentioning the food. Though most people do not think of Eastern Europe as a garden of culinary delights, I must say that every single thing I ate in Krakow was scrumptious. The pierogies, the soups, the fried pork cutlets, the potato pancakes, and, yes, even the cabbage—it was all terrific. (I would like to single out the restaurant Domowe Przysmaki for special praise.) One night, my brother and I walked out of the center of town to visit a food cart selling nothing but grilled kielbasa, and it was worth the cold and the long line. The fresh ingredients and bright flavors of Mediterranean cuisine get all of the attention, but if you ask me the salty, vinegary, smoky flavors of Poland are just as satisfying.

Considering everything I mentioned in this post, along with the opportunity to visit Auschwitz (detailed in another post), I would say that this is one of the most interesting and rewarding corners of Europe for the traveler. 

Review: The Dawn of Everything

Review: The Dawn of Everything

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Social theory is largely a game of make-believe in which we pretend, just for the sake of argument, that there’s just one thing going on…

This is a difficult book to review. Not only is it long and extremely ambitious, it is also a beguiling mixture of strengths and weaknesses that are difficult to untangle. To begin with, this book is not, as its title promises, a history of humanity; and considering that the book only examines the past 10,000 years, it is also not about the dawn of humanity, much less everything. Really, this book has a far more focused purpose: to dismantle the standard narrative of how humans went from hunter-gatherers to urban-dwelling agriculturalists.

The standard narrative—as found in many popular books, from Steven Pinker to Jared Diamond to Yuval Noah Harari—goes something like this: In the beginning, humans were all hunter-gatherers, living in small groups, taking only what they needed from their environments. Only the most rudimentary technologies were employed; yet there was no war, no poverty, no oppression, no office jobs, no television commercials, no taxes, no bureaucracy, no robo-calls—in short, it was a simple time.

Now, depending on whether you follow Rousseau or Hobbes, you may differ as to whether you consider such a state of affairs a paradise or a slaughterhouse, and thus you may think that the switch to city life was a fall from grace or a stairway to heaven. But both camps agree that agriculture implies hierarchy, since the extra resources freed up some members of the group to do things other than just gather food; and once there was specialization, there had to be people to coordinate the specialists—in a word, leaders, middle-managers, and bureaucrats. Thus, the egalitarian band of hunter-gatherers eventually became the walled city controlled by an oligarchy, or the great empire ruled by a monarchy, or the insurance office run by the regional manager.

The simplest way to characterize this book is that it is a long refutation of this narrative. The authors do this by citing counter-example after counter-example from the archaeological record. This is where the book is most entertaining, as a great many of these archaeological anecdotes are both surprising and fascinating. By citing this evidence, the authors attempt to show, first, that hunter-gatherers did not all have the roaming lifestyle or the total lack of social structure that is often projected onto them. Elaborate burials and, most conspicuously, large stone monuments paint quite a different story of our ancestors.

The authors go on to show that the transition to farming was not sudden, nor did it immediately lead to dramatic social changes. Many communities, they aver, practiced a kind of limited farming for centuries before they became full-time agriculturalists. Furthermore, there is no necessary connection between the switch to city life and the rise of hierarchy, or the rise of empires and the invention of bureaucracy. In a nutshell, the authors contend that the main characteristics of the modern state—centralized leadership, a monopoly on violence, an administration to carry out laws, and so on—are a kind of constellation of social features, all of which have diverse and, often, quite unrelated origins, and which only came together to form the modern state gradually. To put the matter most succinctly, then, our world of nation states was not the inevitable outcome of a deterministic process.

Now, summarizing the book in the above manner is not exactly fair. The central thesis of the book is all too often in the background, and the reader is instead swimming through a sea of examples and ideas, struggling to spot land. This is both a vice and a virtue, since many of these observations, arguments, and examples—though leading off in a thousand directions from the central path—are quite intriguing. Still, it does often feel as though the authors are trying to take on the entire world, criticizing everything from the naming of epochs in archaeological literature to the academic treatment of feminist theories of prehistory. Interesting, yes, but a little distracting.

How to evaluate the book, then? As an attack on a commonly held myth of how humans went from agriculturalists to urbanites, it is successful. At the very least, the authors convince us that prehistory is an awful lot more complex and compelling than the simple, linear narratives we often project onto it. Nevertheless, I found myself wondering to what extent this myth predominates in the academic community. After all, the direct targets of the authors’ criticism are popular writers, whose specialty is not even prehistory (Pinker, Diamond, etc.). When academia is mentioned, the authors portray researchers as so hopelessly specialized, or so beholden to prejudices, as to be unable to see the big picture. Is that true? Regardless, I do think this book has a lot to offer the interested layperson, at least. It is a successful popularization of archaeology.

Yet it would be remiss of me not to mention the obvious political motivations of the authors. Both of them anarchists, this book can be read as one long justification of their beliefs. It is as if they are saying, “See? Humans don’t have to life in states, with huge bureaucracies and oppressive hierarchies!” But I do not think this was necessarily a good rhetorical strategy for promoting their philosophy. For one, when we are considering what we should do now, today, in a sense it does not matter whether humans lived in this or that place, at this or that time, in an approximately anarchist manner. History is not destiny. What is more, the societies the authors discuss are so totally unlike our own—in terms of scale, technology, and accumulated history—that it does not seem particularly relevant, anyway. (I am not, you understand, arguing against anarchism here, only the rather heavy-handed role their sympathies played in the writing of the book.)

While somewhat overbearing, disorganized, and not altogether convincing, as a corrective to many other popular accounts of human history, this book is valuable indeed.



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A Visit to Auschwitz

A Visit to Auschwitz

The train slowed as it approached its destination. Outside, I could see a bleak landscape of dead trees, soggy fields of gray, covered with a haze of fog. We were in Oświęcim, Poland, about an hour’s train ride from Krakow. It was a cold February day in 2020, and we had arrived to visit Auschwitz.

The walk from the station to the former concentration camp was brief. Beside the road, the remains of the old railroad tracks used to transport prisoners were preserved. After showing our tickets at the entrance (it is strongly recommended to book them in advance), we were ushered inside and, within minutes, our tour of the complex had commenced.

The tour guide was a young Polish man who spoke excellent English. From his somber tone, it was immediately clear what kind of tour this was: a visit to the site of a historical atrocity. Still, I could not resist taking a photograph of the infamous “Arbeit Macht Frei” gate. Though this slogan—German for “Work sets you free”—seems to be a kind of sick joke, according to historian Laurence Rees, it was placed there without any sense of irony by the camp commandant, Rudolf Höss, who had himself spent four years in prison. In any case, as you undoubtedly know, it was very far from the truth.

As the guide informed us, what is often thought of as “Auschwitz” was actually two camps, Auschwitz and the newer, larger Birkenau. We were now in the older, original camp. It consisted of tall brick buildings arranged in neat rows. Our guide spoke rapidly, giving us some idea of the history of the camp. It had been opened in 1940, originally to house Polish prisoners of war. Even at this early stage, however, the camp was a sadistically cruel place, where many inmates quickly died. By 1941, mass execution via gassing had commenced; and from 1942 to 1944, the camp became the site of mass death for Jews who were transported from all over Europe. In all, over one million inmates died at the camp. The day of its liberation by the Red Army, on January 27, 1945, is commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

But this tour was not primarily educational. It was designed to make us feel the horrors that went on in that place. To that end, many of the buildings in Auschwitz have been converted into exhibition spaces. It is viscerally disturbing. We saw the discarded glasses, shoes, luggage, pans, pots, canes, crutches, artificial limbs, and walking sticks of the victims. Most nauseating, there was a large mound of the victim’s hair, shaved from women’s bodies after gassing, and examples of clothes that were woven from such hair. Inmates with dental experience were also employed to remove any gold teeth from victims. All of these remnants form a powerful summary of how the Nazis dehumanized their victims. It was not enough to kill their ‘enemies.’ The bodies had to be turned, as much as possible, into sources of profit, or industrial products.

This attitude is just as apparent in the so-called ‘experiments’ that the Nazis subjected some of their victims to. The guide only touched on this aspect briefly, but the details are chilling. The company IG Farben, for example, paid the camp for 150 female inmates, in order to test an anesthetic. A letter regarding the test still survives; it reads: “The transport of 150 women arrived in good condition. However, we were unable to determine conclusive results because they died during the experiments.” The letter ends with a request for more inmates. And, of course, there was Dr. Mengele, who performed savage experiments on identical twins before killing and dissecting them. This ‘experimentation’ took place in block 10.

Nextdoor, in the closed space between blocks 10 and 11, executions were performed—usually on prisoners of war. Thousands died this way: forced to kneel, and then shot in the back of the head with a small-caliber pistol. The neighboring building, Block 11, was used for brutal punishments, such as being hung from the ceiling by one’s wrists, or being forced to stand in a cell for days on end. In 1941, a group of prisoners were deliberately starved to death in the small, dark, windowless cells in the lower level, as retribution for other prisoners who had managed to escape.

After this, the guide took us to the first gas chamber in the camp, Crematorium I. Here is where the Nazis who ran the camp perfected their method of mass-execution. Prisoners were told they were going to take a shower or to be de-loused. This kept people calm and allowed the camp to preserve a facade of order. After removing their clothes, they were herded into the chamber, and the door locked behind them. Then, pellets of Zyklon B were dropped into the chamber from the ceiling, releasing hydrogen cyanide gas that would kill everyone inside within minutes. The bodies were then burned. All this was explained to us as we stood outside the structure—which looks like a concrete bunker—and then we were briefly led inside. The structure that stands now is a reconstruction (the Nazis tried to hide the evidence of their crimes). Still, if it is faithful to the original, then it is chilling that such a nondescript place could the site of mass murder.

The gallows where Rudolf Höss was executed

Right next to this crematorium—on the spot where the Gestapo headquarters used to be—was where Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, was executed. Höss unsuccessfully tried to go into hiding after the war by pretending to be a low-ranking soldier. But he was arrested in 1946, tried by the Polish Supreme National Tribunal in 1947, and hanged on a specially made gallows shortly thereafter. According to Laurence Rees, the execution had to be postponed for several days because the crowd—which included camp survivors—became unruly and aggressive (understandably). Yet as our guide informed us, it is hard to say that justice was done, as less than 15% of those who worked at Auschwitz were ever tried. As a case in point, the horrid Josef Mengele died of natural causes in Brazil.

After this, our group boarded a small bus that drove us to the second camp, known as Auschwitz II-Birkenau. This camp, built in 1941 on Himmler’s orders, has a very different look from the original Auschwitz. It is much larger, built on a wide, open field. The surviving structures are also shorter and less substantial. This is the camp that was specifically built for mass killing and large-scale slave labor. The guide showed us the train tracks that brought the prisoners in through the front gate. Here, Mengele (among others) would make his “selections,” choosing who would be forced to work, who would be used for experiments, and who would be immediately sent to the gas chambers. (Auschwitz is unique for having been both a concentration camp—where prisoners are forced to work—and an execution camp. Usually a camp was one or the other.)

An example of the kind of train car that would transport prisoners to Auschwitz

Our guide then took us to the site of the two main crematoria. They are little more than piles of broken concrete now, as the Nazis destroyed them before they abandoned the camp. Still, it is deeply unsettling to see the remains of a building made especially for mass killing. The victims would be led to an underground room, where they undressed in preparation for “disinfection,” leaving their clothes on numbered pegs. Then, after walking down a hallway, they entered the gas chamber, where Zyklon B was dropped inside. (From the outside these looked like bricked-up cottages; one was called the “little red house,” and the other the “little white house.”) As soon as it was safe to enter, the bodies were taken to the adjoining crematorium and burned. An efficient factory of death.

The ruins of one of the gas chambers

It was here that the guide left us. My final image of Auschwitz was walking through one of the old barracks for prisoners. It was a simple, one-story structure with brick walls. With its poor insolation and large windows (I am not sure if they originally had glass in them), it must have offered little warmth in the cold months. Prisoners slept on wooden bunks, often with more than one prisoner crammed into each bunk. The abysmal living conditions—a scanty diet, insufficient clothing, poor sanitation—meant that many prisoners died without the use of gas chambers, simply through malnutrition, disease, cold, or overwork.

I have given the briefest description of Auschwitz. There is infinitely more that could be said; and there are many captivating books on the subject. There are also, I am sure, many lessons and morals that can be drawn from this atrocity. What struck me was how perfectly designed the camp was to strip inmates of their humanity. The entire process—from transport, to uniforms and tattoos, to the living quarters, to the gas chambers, to the use of prisoners for experiments and their bodies for raw materials—was designed to turn individual human beings into something entirely disposable, like cattle. This allowed men like Höss and his subordinates to perpetuate one of history’s greatest crimes with hardly a second thought.

Later, we were on the train, heading back to Krakow. I did not feel sad, or angry, or even somber—just a kind of emptiness. If a place like Auschwitz is possible, what does that tell us about being human in the first place?