Czestochowa Friday, May 15

Czestochowa is Poland's major pilgrimage site, and since the pontificate of John Paul II, linked to Rome and routes of Catholic pilgrims from all over Europe and north America. It is a monastery located on "Bright Mountain" (Claramontana or Jasna Gora), home to Paulite monks and a chapel that houses an icon of the Virgin Mary, popularly called in English, the "Black Madonna." Fires, candlelight, and age darken icons, hence her soubriquet. Done in the Byzantine style of the Mediterranean, the icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa is an eastern or orthodox form of pictorial art rather than western or Roman Catholic; it somehow migrated to Poland. The icon is associated with the miraculous raising of the seige of the Swedish army in Poland in the 17th century (the Polish king at the time vowed that Mary would be queen of Poland if the Swedish army were defeated). Whatever the reasons, the overextended Swedes retreated; the monks of the monastery defended their hill successfully, and a pilgrimage site was born. The faithful visit here year round---young, old, groups of artists, and all kinds of pilgrims pray for themselves and their families at Czestochowa. Catholicism eventually overwhelmed an older tradition of religious and linguistic pluralism, an earlier heritage of trade, eastward expansion, and gentry aversion to fanaticism.

Good bye Lenin

This is Nowa Huta, a planned socialist city to house the workers at the Lenin Steelworks, about 30 minutes by tram from Krakow. The young man is Kyril, our guide through this gigantic foundary and its workers' housing, deliberately situated near Krakow to offset the bourgeois conservative (and Catholic) traditions of the Austrian Galicia. Kyril's grandparents came to Nowa Huta. Alas, the foundry and its enormous apartment blocks were developed on some of the best agricultural land in southern Poland. More catastrophic was the pollution Nowa Huta generated, affecting generations of workers and harming all the buildings of Krakow. During PRL (Peoples' Poland or communist times) the apartments were large and food supplies plentiful (late 1950s to 1980s). The foundry still functions, but under foreign ownership and employs only a fraction of the workers. Young people and artists are starting to rent vacant apartments because housing in Krakow itself is so costly and hard to obtain. As an experiment in planned housing, Nowa Huta is fascinating; its layout is geometric, not unlike 18th-19th century experiments in urban design. Grocery stores, elementary schools, shops were planned for each section of the development, along with broad tree-lined boulevards through which police could easily be deployed. The enormous statue of Lenin once in the central square was bought by Sweden and now stands in Stockholm---where people have more of a sense of humor about the "workers' paradise."

Kl Auschwitz, Tuesday May 12

Today we traveled to Auschwitz, the German name for Oswiecim. It's an hour's ride from Krakow. I've been there twice before, but the visit is still shocking. Each time another facet of the camp comes into focus. Today I was struck by the routinization of genocide, the industrial-style organization of the death process that surpasses brutality and leaps into the bizarre. The modernity and efficiency of this extermination site is a distinctive feature of what the Nazis termed "the Final Solution," a dimension that sets the Holocaust apart in the sad roll call of mass murders. No wonder the starved, exhausted victims could not imagine the fate that awaited them. Such an industrialized form of killing was not yet a part of history. That traces of humanity survived at all among the victims seems miraculous.

I've noticed that in the last decade the historical background provided by the guides has improved. The young man who was our guide (and the guides are almost all under 40) was well trained and informed. Auschwitz is a research center where historical data is continually explored and updated. Conservators maintain the camps; funds for maintenance are provided by the Polish and German governments, the EU, and Unesco. It is very costly to keep the site preserved and part of what visitors see is reconstruction. The territory that comprised the entire Auschwitz complex is very large. To set up the camp, the Germans cleared the area of all Polish population, deported them, and used their buildings' material to build the camp. Slave labor was the fate of only those who were healthy enough to work---some 20-25% of those transported to Auschwitz. The vast majority transported (especially women with children, the elderly, the infirm) went directly to death.