Considering Auschwitz; Visiting Wawel

Photo: Part of the Wawel Castle complex.

I went to sleep last night pondering some of the issues I wrote about yesterday, namely the local treatment of the Holocaust, and how it pertains to tourism in this region. I worried that this would give me bad or strange dreams, and indeed this anxiety kept me from falling asleep promptly. In my head I debated an irksome problem: whether or not I ought to break away from my wife for the day in order to visit the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Something in particular caused me to debate this question in my head: specifically, either the authors or those who compiled our guide book (many sections of which I read quite attentively either before or during our visit here) described a visit to Auschwitz as a sight that „should be compulsory viewing.“ (Lonely Planet Poland, 5th edition, p. 261) I can’t say I agree with this statement, although I certainly understand where such sentiments come from. However, as I attempted to write in my entry yesterday, it seems as though there are two distinct ways to handle the deep and painful emotions brought about by the Holocaust. First, there is the thinking that by publicizing the attrocities, by learning as much about them as possible and by visiting the sights at which they occured and by encouraging others to do so, the memories of those murdered will never be forgotten and the horrors will not be repeated. Secondly though – and I think this is the way that most people choose to deal with the Holocaust – one can also consider the atrocities of the Holocaust as too horrible to mention, as too disturbing to fully consider. Having already visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. and having previously viewed documentary footage taken from concentration camps, such as that in Night and Fog,, while it may be naive or presumptuous to assume so, I feel as though I have a fairly clear grasp of what happened during the Holocaust. The minutia of how exactly this gruesome process was carried out strikes me as an experience I cannot expect to understand, or to appreciate in whatever way those who would consider Auschwitz compulsory viewing.

From what I already know of this topic, for myself at least, at this moment, I deem Auschwitz an experience too awful to fully consider. That is not to say that I would never visit Auschwitz or another concentration camp, but for this particular journey, I did not feel the moment to be appropriate. Without a personal connection to the history of that place, I felt as though my visiting the camp – while it would have certainly produced sadness within me – it would have been a empty sadness, one that could not expect to be resolved by a visit there. And therefore, what purpose would it have served? And with this question lingering in my head, I tabled a visit to Auschwitz for another time before getting ready for sleep. It’s not a personal issue I consider resolved, but an ethical one that I’m sure a lot of people deal with.

At anyrate, by the time we’d finished breakfast this morning, we’d made a plan for our last full day in Poland. First we headed to Wawel Castle, the huge complex of royal quarters and fortifications at the southern tip of Krakow’s Old Town. This place was more or less inundated by tourists, but understandably so; the site was home to the Polish monarchs for centuries (before they moved to Warsaw) and accordingly, the palace (which survived World War II in good condition) houses a huge collection of antique paintings, furniture, carvings, weaponry, armor, and a number of other treasures we opted not to see on this trip due to time and financial restraints. (The royal tapestry collection, with which King Zygmunt August was apparently obsessed, will have to be saved for another visit, although we did see a fair share of his fancy rugs as part of the basic royal tour.) While the royal apartments that we saw were interesting and highly ornate, I must say the armoury was more impressive; I cannot remember having seen such a massive collection of decorative weapons or armour; particularly interesting was the szczerbiec, the sword used „in all Polish coronations from 1320 onwards“ (LP Poland, 135), which was a long sword with the Polish crest encrusted upon it.

Speaking of the length of swords and the like, it was rather astonishing – even amusing at times -- to see the enormity of some of the weapons and personal armor that some of the royalty received as gifts or kept for ceremonial purposes or for display. In an age where the average size of a man was considerably smaller than today, these men still owned swords that I can hardly imagine lifting – I’m talking about five foot long swords, 50 pound suits of armor, and ceremonial wear that would have been tagged XXXXL had it been made in India instead of given as a gift from the Pope. I’m not sure whether or not such items would have been left on display in the castle (much in the way they are today) in order to intimidate court visitors who would have little, if any actual contact with the royals. But what I indeed can imagine would be the potential embarassment and Monty Python-esqe snickers that the the royal must have had to endure on any occasion where he might have actually had to lift such a monstrous weapon. Also within the Wawel complex lies another of Poland’s most important cathedrals, which houses a number of relics sacred to Catholics as well as the remains of the Polish royalty and other famous Poles, such as writer Adam Mickiewicz and national heroes Jozef Pilsudski and Tadeusz Kosciuszko.

Of course this place is also stuffed to the gills with fantastic artistry. The sides of the cathedral are made up of seperate chapels, each of which has distinct and remarkable alterpieces and other adornments. From the outside one can see several of the chapels, and how they were probably added to the main building in different stages. The result is a somewhat eclectic but entirely unique and impressive facade. Another interesting aspect of the cathedral was the Sigismund Bell, which I managed to climb my way up to after overcoming a brief but intimidating spell of claustro- and acro-phobia. The passageway up to the bell – a simply huge instrument, as oversized as any of the king’s fancy outfits or swords at 11 metric tons – was fortunately not too high. While I honestly wasn’t that impressed by the bell itself, it was an interesting oddity. But the construction of the wooden staircase and the bell’s support structure was more memorable to me due to its creepy interior that one sees in movies or television at times. I always assumed that such places, with creaking, thick wooden floors and shadowy corners, no longer existed; that they were only recreations of stories or drawings. But indeed they’re still here in Europe and in fact I’ve encountered a number of them here, in Amsterdam, in Hamburg, in Prague, and now here in Krakow as well. Really, that was about the end of the day. We cut it a bit shorter than some of our previous days on the trip, mostly because our legs were pretty worn out from all the walking we’ve done the past six days.