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Poland Rediscovered: Travel Details

This is a quick and handy source for details on the sights, hotels, tour guides and restaurants featured in "Poland Rediscovered: Krakow, Auschwitz and Warsaw" show. For much more (and updates), see this year's edition of Rick Steves' Eastern Europe guidebook.

 
Wawel

This hill has seen lots of changes over the years. Kazimierz the Great turned a small fortress into a mighty Gothic castle in the 14th century. Today you'll see the cathedral and a castle complex, but little remains of Kazimierz's grand fortress, which burned to the ground in 1499. In the grassy field across from the cathedral, you'll see the foundations of two Gothic churches that were destroyed when the Austrians took over Wawel in the 19th century and needed a parade ground for their troops (3 zl, enter around corner from bookstore on courtyard overlooking the river, April–Oct daily 10:00–17:00, closed Nov-March).

Kazimierz the Great

Out of the centuries of Polish kings, only one earned the nickname "great," and he's the only one worth remembering: Kazimierz the Great.

K. the G., who ruled Poland from Kraków in the 14th century, was one of those larger-than-life medieval kings who left his mark on all fronts — from war to diplomacy, art patronage to womanizing. His scribes bragged that Kazimierz found a Poland made of wood and left one made of brick and stone. He put Kraków on the map as a major European capital. He founded many villages (some of which still bear his name) and replaced wooden structures with stone ones (such as Kraków's Cloth Hall). He also established the Kraków Academy (today's Jagiellonian University), the second-oldest university in Central Europe.

Most of all, Kazimierz is remembered as a progressive, tolerant king. In the 14th century, other nations were deporting — or even interning — their Jewish subjects, who were commonly scapegoated for anything that went wrong. But the enlightened and kindly Kazimierz actively encouraged Jews to come to Poland by granting them special privileges, often relating to banking and trade — establishing the country as a safe haven for Jews in Europe.

Kazimierz the Great was the last of Poland's long-lived Piast dynasty. Although he left no male heir — at least, no legitimate ones — Kazimierz's advances set the stage for Poland's golden age. After his death, Poland united with Lithuania (against the common threat of the Teutonic Knights), the Jagiellonian dynasty was born and Poland became one of Europe's mightiest medieval powers.

Jews in Kraków

After King Kazimierz the Great encouraged Jews to come to Poland in the 14th century, a large Jewish community settled in and around Kraków. According to legend, Kazimierz (the king) established Kazimierz (the village) for his favorite girlfriend — a Jewish woman named Ester — just southeast of the city walls. (If you have a 50-zl note, take a look at it: that's Kazimierz the Great on the front and on the back is his capital, Cracovia and the most important town he founded, Casmirus.)

It's a cute legend, but the village of Kazimierz didn't really become a Jewish enclave until much later. By the end of the 15th century, there were large Jewish populations in both Kazimierz and in Kraków. Kraków's Jewish community and the university students clashed and when a destructive fire broke out in 1495, the Jews were blamed. The king at the time (not Kazimierz the Great) forced all of Kraków's Jews to move to Kazimierz.

Kazimierz was an autonomous community, with its own Town Hall, market square and city walls (though many Jews still commuted into Kraków's Square to do business). The Christian (west) and Jewish (east) neighborhoods were also separated by a wall. But by 1800, the walls came down, Kazimierz became part of Kraków and the Jewish community flourished.

By the start of World War II, 65,000 Jews lived in Kraków (mostly in Kazimierz) — making up more than a quarter of the city's population. Soon after the Nazis arrived, they forced Kraków's Jews into a walled ghetto at Podgórze, across the river. The Jews' cemeteries were defiled and their buildings ransacked and destroyed. In 1942, the Nazis began transporting Kraków's Jews to death camps. Many others were worked to death in the Podgórze ghetto. Only a few thousand Kraków Jews survived the war.

Today's Kraków has only about a hundred Jewish residents. Kazimierz still has an empty feeling, but the neighborhood has enjoyed a renaissance of Jewish culture, following the popularity of Schindler's List (which was filmed partly in Kazimierz — look for handwritten letters from Steven Spielberg and the cast in local restaurants — such as Ariel — and hotels; these have more recently been joined by autographs from The Pianist director Roman Polanski). While few Jews live here now, the spirit of the Jewish tradition lives on in the many synagogues, as well as in the soulful cemeteries.

Klezmer dinner concerts

If you want fancy dining with a Jewish folk-music serenade, Kazimierz has it. Several restaurants on ulica Szeroka (Kazimierz's main square) offer klezmer concerts — traditional Jewish music from 19th-century Poland, generally with violin, string bass, clarinet and accordion — nightly in the summer at 20:00 (unless otherwise noted). Each restaurant has a similar menu with main dishes for around 20 zl; you'll pay an additional 20-zl cover charge per person just for the music. While it'd be nice to pop in each one to compare the music, it's customary to reserve ahead at a single place to dine.

Klezmer-Hois, filling a venerable former Jewish ritual bathhouse, feels like you're dining in a rich grandparent's home (#6, music nightly year-round, tel. 012/411-1245, www.klezmer.pl). Restauracja Arka Noego ("Noah's Ark") has a good reputation for its music (15-zl cover, music nightly at 20:30 March-Oct, shares building with Jarden Bookshop at #2, tel. 012/429-1528). Ariel is an elegant restaurant that has gone downhill in recent years and receives mixed reviews for its food (music in up to 4 different rooms, best upstairs in the larger dining hall, #18, tel. 012/421-7920).

Auschwitz

The unassuming regional capital of Oswiecim (ohsh-VEENCH-im) was the site of one of humanity's most unspeakably horrifying tragedies: the systematic murder of at least 1.1 million innocent people. From 1941 until 1945, Oswiecim was the site of Auschwitz, the biggest, most notorious concentration camp in the Nazi system. Today, Auschwitz is the most poignant memorial anywhere to the victims of the Holocaust.

A visit here is obligatory for Polish 14-year-olds; students usually come again during their last year of school as well. You'll also often see Israeli high school groups walking through the grounds waving their Star of David flags. Many people, including Germans, leave flowers and messages. One of the messages reads: "Nations who forget their own history are sentenced to live it again."

Entrance to the camp is free, but donations are gladly accepted. The museum opens every day at 8:00 and closes in June–Aug at 19:00, May and Sept at 18:00, April and Oct at 17:00, March and Nov–mid-Dec at 16:00 and mid-Dec–Feb at 15:00. Information: tel. 033/844-8107, www.auschwitz.org.pl.

Wieliczka Salt Mine

A tour of the Salt Mine shows how the miners lived and worked (using horses who lived their whole lives without ever seeing the light of day), takes you through some impressive underground caverns past subterranean lakes and introduces you to some of the mine's many sculptures (including an army of salt elves and this region's favorite son, Pope John Paul II). Your jaw will drop as you enter the enormous Chapel of the Blessed Kinga, carved over three decades in the early 20th century. Look for the salt-relief carving of the Last Supper.

While advertised as two hours, your tour finishes in a deep-down shopping zone 90 minutes after you started (and they hope you'll hang out and shop). Note when the next elevator departs (just 3/hr) and you can be outta there on the next lift. Zip through the shopping zone in two minutes or step over the rope and be immediately at the line for the great escape (you'll be escorted 300 yards to the skinny industrial elevator, into which you'll be packed like mine workers).

Visits are by tour only (40 zl for a guided tour, 10 zl extra to use your camera). English tours are generally daily at 10:00 and 12:30 all year; June and Sept–Oct also at 15:00; July–Aug also at 11:30, 13:45, 15:00 and 17:00. If you miss the English-language tour (or decide to just show up and take whatever's going next), follow the fine 3-zl guidebook, which narrates the exact route the tours do and actually gives you more info than the tour guide (daily April–Oct 7:30–19:30, Nov–March 8:00–16:00, ulica Danilowicza 10, tel. 012/278-7302, www.kopalnia.pl). Dress warmly — the mine is a constant 57 degrees Fahrenheit. When buying a ticket, you'll be asked if you want the mine museum. It adds an hour to the mine tour (and is discouraged by local guides: "1.5 miles more walking, colder, more of the same").

Jazz Club U Muniaka

The club has live music nightly at 21:30 (10- to 20-zl cover, cheap drinks after that, best bands Thu–Sat, umuniaka.krakow.pl). If you hang around the bar before the show, you might find yourself sitting next to Janusz himself, smoking his pipe...and getting ready to smoke on the saxophone.

Jewish Ghetto Uprising

From the Middle Ages until World War II, Poland was a safe haven for Europe's Jews. When other kings were imprisoning and deporting Jews in the 14th century, the progressive King Kazimierz the Great welcomed Jews into Poland, even granting them special privileges.

By the 1930s, there were more than 380,000 Jews in Warsaw — nearly a third of the population (and the largest concentration of Jews in the world). The Nazis arrived in 1939. Within a year, they had pushed all of Warsaw's Jews into one neighborhood and surrounded it with a wall, creating a miserably overcrowded ghetto (crammed full of half a million people, including many from nearby towns). Over the next year, the Nazis brought in more Jews from throughout Poland and the number grew by a million.

By the summer of 1942, more than a quarter of the Jews in the ghetto had already died of disease, murder, or suicide. The Nazis started moving Warsaw's Jews (at the rate of 5,000 a day) into what they claimed were "resettlement camps." Most of these people were actually murdered at Treblinka or Auschwitz. After hundreds of thousands of Jews had been taken to concentration camps, the waning population — now about 60,000 — began to get word from concentration camp escapees escapees about what was actually going on there. Spurred by this knowledge, Warsaw's surviving Jews staged a dramatic uprising.

On April 19, 1943, the Jews attacked Nazi strongholds and had some initial success — but within a month, the Nazis crushed the Ghetto Uprising. The ghetto's residents and structures were "liquidated." About 300 of Warsaw's Jews survived, thanks in part to a sort of "underground railroad" of courageous Varsovians.

The sights of Warsaw's Jewry are moving, but even more so if you know some of their stories. Many Americans have heard of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Jewish concert pianist who survived the war with the help of Jews, Poles and even a Nazi officer. Szpilman's life story was turned into the highly acclaimed, Oscar-winning 2002 film The Pianist, which powerfully depicts events in Warsaw during World War II.

Less familiar to Americans — but equally affecting — is the story of Henryk Goldszmit, better known by his pen name, Janusz Korczak. Korczak wrote imaginative children's books that are still enormously popular among Poles. He also worked at an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto. When his orphans were sent off to concentration camps, the Nazis offered the famous author a chance at freedom. Korczak turned them down and chose to die at Treblinka with his children.

Warsaw Uprising

By the summer of 1944, it was becoming clear that the Nazis' days in Warsaw were numbered. The Red Army drew near and by late July, Soviet tanks were beginning to gather just across the Vistula River from downtown Warsaw.

The Varsovians could have simply waited for the Soviets to cross the river and force the Nazis out. But they knew that Soviet "liberation" would also mean an end to Polish independence. The Polish Home Army (which numbered 400,000 and was the biggest underground army in military history) decided to take matters into their own hands. On August 1, 50,000 Polish resistance fighters launched a surprise attack on their Nazi oppressors. They poured out of the sewers and caught the Nazis off-guard, initially having great success.

But the Nazis regrouped quickly and within a few days, they had retaken several areas of the city — murdering tens of thousands of innocent civilians as they went. By September 2, the Home Army was surrounded and 2,000 soldiers fled through the sewers. Most drowned or were killed by Nazi bullets and bombs.

Just two months after it had started, the Warsaw Uprising ended with the surrender of the Home Army. About 18,000 Polish uprisers were killed, along with nearly 200,000 innocent civilians. An infuriated Hitler ordered that the city be destroyed — which it was, systematically, block-by-block, until virtually nothing remained.

Through all of this, the Soviets sat across the river, watched and waited. When the smoke cleared and the Nazis left, the Red Army marched in and claimed the pile of rubble that was once called Warsaw. After the war, General Dwight D. Eisenhower said that the scale of destruction here was the worst he'd ever seen.

Depending on whom you talk to, the desperate uprising of Warsaw was incredibly brave, stupid, or both. As for the Poles, they remain fiercely proud of their struggle for freedom.

Back to the "Poland Rediscovered: Krakow, Auschwitz and Warsaw" script

Excerpted from Rick Steves' Best of Eastern Europe 2005