While most travellers come to see Kazimierz’s historic museums and synagogues during the day, I stay long enough to see how the neighbourhood changes after the sun sets. Now his building houses an excellent museum that tells the story of Schindler’s list and the painful era of Nazi occupation. Businessman Oskar Schindler ran his factory here, saving the lives of more than a thousand of his Jewish workers. This is where the big events of the Second World War intersected with ordinary, everyday lives. Kraków was their social and political base. At one time, most of Europe’s Jews lived in Poland. I recognize lots of names on the tombs in England and almost none here in Poland.)īeyond Wawel Hill, I eventually wander into Kazimierz, the city’s historic Jewish Quarter. (While I keep thinking “this is like the Westminster Abbey of Poland,” I’m also struck by the ethnocentricity of my Western orientation. I step into Wawel Cathedral, a stony jungle of memorials that houses the tombs of the country’s greatest rulers and historic figures. I’m happy to discover that while communist-era fare was gristle and gruel, today’s milk-bar cuisine - while still extremely cheap - is much tastier.Īfter my memorable lunch, I continue walking and end up on Wawel Hill, considered sacred ground as a symbol of Polish royalty and independence. I head to the counter, point to what I want, and get a quick, hearty, and very cheap meal. The tradition continues today, as capitalist Poland still subsidizes milk-bar meals. The communist government subsidized the food at these cafeterias to provide working-class Poles with an affordable meal out. But I’m also thankful that one charming souvenir of communist times does survive: the milk bar (bar mleczny). I’m thankful that Kraków is now much cleaner - and freer - than it was a generation ago. They built Nowa Huta, an enormous steelworks on the city’s outskirts, dooming it to decades of smog. But when the communists took over, they decided to give intellectual - and therefore potentially dissident - Kraków an injection of good Soviet values in the form of heavy industry.
Kraków emerged from the Second World War virtually unscathed. Austria’s comparatively liberal climate helped Kraków become a haven for intellectuals and progressives - including a young Russian revolutionary named Vladimir Lenin. Petersburg, the capital of imperial Russia, while Kraków was absorbed, for a time, into an Austrian province. Warsaw ended up as a satellite of oppressive St. In the 1800s, Poland was partitioned by neighbouring powers. With the city’s power waning, the capital was moved to more centrally located Warsaw in the late 1500s. This is just one colourful tidbit of Kraków’s long history.
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