We went to a city in the southwestern tip of Poland called Zgorzelec on Septermber 8 Thursday. It was a part of a German city called Gorlitz (Goelitz), but after 1945 it was divided in half, since the Nyse River which runs in the middle became the border. The western part belonged to DDR and the other Poland.
The western part has the old town, the main square, and old churches, while the Polish side is more residential and industrial. Zgorzelec also housed Stalag, prisoner-of-war camp during the WWII. Now these two cities are cooperating in many aspects. And people in both sides go to the other side freely, which was not imaginable until recently when Poland entered the Shengen area for EU citizens to cross borders without passport control.
CG Leipzig joined us and we did a joint visit of Gorlitz and Zgorzelec for three days. It was very interesting to see how the both cities, once a single city, now in different countries, but move forward in each way. Needless to say, Gorlitz side is inhabited by Germans and Zgorzelec by Polish population expelled from the former eastern territory of Poland of current Ukraine, Belorus, and Lithuania. The German side has a big concern of demography, since many young people left for the western part of Germany as is often the case in the depressed East. While the city itself was restored beautifully, the streets are rather empty.
Yesterday we attended the commemoration of 9/11 in Kielce. The city is known for Kielce Pogrom in 1946 and the current mayor who is in his third term is determined to come to term with the city's past and founded 9/11 monument pursuing the tolerance. That's why this monument stands there. Middle and high school students from all over Kielce gathered at the memorial site and brought candles with an individual's name perished in Ground Zero in New York, a total of 2600. Each student researched his/her victim's story and put the victim's name on the candle and carried to the monument. It was a very touching ceremony.
After visiting Auschwitz a friend from America mentioned that she felt that people should not dwell on these past issues and they should move on. I had been thinking about that. I came to think that in Poland those issues which happened during the WWII hadn't fully explained or reserached or discussed until quite recently. The communist government had its own interpretation of Nazism and the outcome of the war and even in Auschwitz the victims were never mentioned as Jews during the communist times. The very complex problems of Polish/Jewish history and interaction made it hard for the regime to look straight and tell what it really happened. The Auschwitz museum she visited is a new attempt and it only in 20 or so years of operation in this current form. Holocaust studies and Jewish studies were totally new topics here in Poland twenty years ago and they rapidly developed into the specialized field, which Poland attracts many scholars and reserchers. Poles are gradually allowed to examine and discuss things which had been taboo for such a long time, so it will take time for the not-so distant history's chapters to close.
No comments:
Post a Comment