In a Polish Town, Whispers Of War
BORNE SULINOWO, Poland — Set in a thick forest, ringed by limpid lakes and free of violent crime, the town of Borne Sulinowo in northwestern Poland has undeniable bucolic charm — except for the ghosts on every eerily quiet street of the Nazi and then Soviet soldiers who built it.
Governed for the past three decades by Poland, the town was controlled by and part of Germany before World War II; seized by the Red Army in 1945; and occupied by Moscow’s forces until 1992. For a time, it embraced its dark side, eager to attract visitors and money to a forlorn and formerly forbidden zone so secret it did not appear on maps.
Military re-enactors, including enthusiasts from Germany and Russia, visited each year to stage a parade, dressed in Soviet and Nazi uniforms, which are banned from public display in Germany.
A Polish businessman opened the Russia Hotel, decorating it with photographs of himself and a friend dressed in Russian military uniforms and with banners embroidered with images of Lenin.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stopped all that. Kitsch became offensively creepy.
“Everything changed very quickly,” said Monika Konieczna-Pilszek, the manager of the Russia Hotel. Online reviews, she said, went from “commenting on our food to talking about burning us down.”
“Instead of attracting people it was repelling them,” she said. The inn is now called the Borne Sulinowo Guesthouse. A big Soviet banner in the hallway next to its restaurant has been turned around so Lenin is no longer visible.
“Nobody wants to be reminded of Russia these days,” Ms. Koniecnza-Pilszek said.
Unlike many Poles, residents of Borne Sulinowo often harbor little personal animosity toward Russians. They are appalled by the bloodshed in Ukraine but blame Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin.
During the Soviet era, the town, home to over 10,000 soldiers, was a world unto itself, scrubbed from maps and off limits to Poles without special passes, though many sneaked in to buy food and vodka.
When the town was part of Germany, Hitler visited, arriving by train in 1938 to inspect what was then a secret military training ground, set up in the forest so that Nazi commanders could furtively practice the blitzkrieg tactics that, just a year later, would plunge Poland and then the rest of Europe into World War II.
“If you just look at the trees and buildings, everything here looks OK, but if you know the history of this place it makes your skin crawl,” said Dariusz Czerniawski, a former teacher who moved to Borne Sulinowo shortly after the last Russians pulled out. They left a ghost town of empty barracks, silent shooting ranges and fields rutted with tank tracks.
After a year under the control of the Polish army, Borne Sulinowo reappeared on maps in 1993 as just another town, inhabited by a few early pioneers like Mr. Czerniawski. “It was so quiet, I wanted to scream,” he recalled.
Over time, more Poles arrived, attracted by cheap housing and the chance for a fresh start. The town now has nearly 5,000 year-round residents and many more people during the summer. It still feels empty and isolated.
The main road — Adolf Hitler Strasse during the Nazi period and Stalin Avenue after 1945 — is now Independence Street.
Lined with gimcrack Soviet apartment blocks intermingled with sturdy villas left by the Germans, it has a few shops and the Sasha Cafe, run by a Russian-speaking man from Ukraine.
Mr. Czerniawski today runs the town’s museum and has spent a lot of time thinking about how to deal with the past. “It would perhaps be easier to demolish the whole town,” he said. “But what would that give us — just a big empty space with no memory of anything?”
Borne Sulinowo, he believes, needs to survive as a “unique place built by the two most brutal totalitarian systems of the last century” — and as a reminder of where such systems lead. “Usually to war,” he said.