POLAND’S ETERNAL CITY ILLUMINATES THE MIND
Kraków is one of central Europe’s most important cities — historically and culturally. It should be in your must-visit list
If you walk a kilometre and a half north from the bustle of Krakow’s main square, you will walk through a series of old buildings and dimly-lit lanes to reach what is called the Jewish Square. Here, much of the construction dates back over a century, and the reason that these buildings still stand is, ironically, thanks to the Nazi occupying forces during World War II. Kraków, Poland’s most important cultural city and its second largest, was one of the important administrative centres for Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, and, for a while, was even the capital of what the Nazis called General Government. Kraków, Hitler’s administration declared, was to be its supply base for agriculture and light industry. As a result, it never got bombed, unlike other occupied cities in Poland.
After its capitulation on September 6, 1939, the Nazis announced that Kraków was an ‘Urdeustche Stadt’ or an ancient German city. Thanks to this false propaganda, the city escaped unscathed. The buildings survived, of course, but Kraków’s Jews did not. They were relegated to ghettos outside the city, and hundreds of thousands of them from across Poland — including Kraków’s — were sent to Auschwitz, the concentration camp 75km west of Kraków and the primary symbol of the Holocaust. By the end of World War II, there were only two Jewish families left in the city.
It took the Allied forces five years and five months to liberate Kraków, but by then, Hitler’s forces had crushed its people and indeed, its soul.
Kraków’s World War II scars, evidently, were never physical. From the outside, therefore, Kraków looks a happy city. Under the skin, though, there is still some darkness, still some hurt. In fact, so entrenched is the Nazi occupation in the Polish psyche that acclaimed filmmaker Steven Spielberg shot some of the most iconic shots of his Academy Award-winning movie, Schindler’s List (1993), at Jozefa Street, part of Kazimierz.
Despite the German influence and virtual takeover of the city’s history and its culture, Kraków bounced back. It houses some of Europe’s best universities, is among the continent’s most important cultural centres, and its Old Town Main Square — the largest medieval structure of its kind in Europe — is symbolic of what the city stands for.
There is also great pride among its citizens for some of its great sons and daughters, with a special place reserved for its most famous resident — the former archbishop of Kraków, Karol Wojtyla. This name is a popular question in school quizzes, for it belongs to Pope John Paul II, the Roman Catholic world’s first nonItalian Pope in 455 years. The place where the Pope stayed during his visits to Kraków is part of every walking tour.
The other son Kraków is extremely proud of is Nicolaus Copernicus, the 15th century mathematician who postulated a new model of the universe, which said that the earth does not lie at the centre of the universe. Copernicus was not just a mathematician; according to his biography, he was also a physician, translator, diplomat, governor, a classics scholar and economist. In 1517, he derived a quantity theory of money — a key concept in economics — and in 1519, he formulated an economic principle that later came to be called Gresham’s law, which essentially states that bad money drives out good.
Like in Prague and other European cities, the best way to explore Kraków is a walking tour with an experienced guide. The usual pick-up point is Florian’s Gate, and entire tour (there are plenty to choose from, and they are all reliable and informative) — which starts at Florianska Street and ends at the Wawel Castle — usually takes two hours. Sturdy, comfortable shoes are a must, because, as in Prague, the old streets are still paved with stones, and it is not easy to walk on them for hours at end. A typical walking tour should take you to Main Market Square (Rynek Glówny), the Cloth Hall (now a souvenirs market), St Mary’s Basilica (Kosciol Mariacki), Town Hall Tower, Rynek Underground Museum (I recommend a separate trip to this place), Defence Trail, Barbican, Grodzka Street, Church of Saints Peter and Paul, Kanonicza Street, Wawel Castle and Wawel Cathedral, and of course, the Jewish area called Kazimierz.
Walking through Kraków — a city built in the 10th century and installed as the Polish capital in the 11th — is like a walk through a time machine. This is not a cliché, it is an experience. History often teaches us about ourselves, but in Kraków, it also illuminates the mind.