//Reminiscences of my visit to Krakow (Poland), a beautiful city with a rude and ugly stamp of WorldWar2//

Krakow behind the scenes

#Main Square & Cloth Hall, Krakow

The market square - A jolly good place with fun and frolic everywhere.  Aroma of delicious food mingles with the sweet sounds of church bells and laughter of the ladies.

Men being men, drinking and flirting; women adorning their finest clothes and jewelry. Merchants from the cloth-hall filling their purses and selling happiness.

Everyone being merry. Christmas all the way.

#The Underground Museum (Podziemia Rynku - Muzeum Historyczne Miasta Krakowa)

Underneath the cobbled stones of the market square, are ruins long forgone.

Those that hold the very foundations of the city. Those that are the soul.

Underneath peoples’ merry faces are the memories of their ancestors’ gory tales.

A severed head in the square, it’s a beautiful architectural piece, but it reminds me so much of the death that prevailed in this place, in the years gone by.

The city remembers. The city dwells down into these ruins time and again, the city recollects and the city remembers.

The ruins are memories. They are brought out and showcased to strangers passing the city. Even the strangers should know, everyone should know. That which has happened should be known and acknowledged across the mortal world. Or the ruined souls will not have peace. Or worse, this might again repeat.

#Auschwitz Concentration Camp

I see beautiful locks of golden hair

So shiny and perfectly cared for

Who might be the lady who adorns this, I wonder

But oh! There is no face to that lovely stranger

All I see is piles of golden hair in a huge glass room

Some fresh, some worn out and dying

What a horrid sight, the glasses, the shoes, the suitcases, the crockery

Piles and piles of everyday things, so mundane but yet, so personal, so real

Heart wrenching.

What moves me most is a tiny baby sweater, neatly laid out in a glass case.

It deserves to be on the baby, it deserves to be soiled by the baby’s tiny muddy hands

But there is no baby, the sweater is now an orphan.

I’m just a passing stranger

But my heart weeps for the city…

The disgust of your own body, when is it not washed for over 100 days.

The discomfort of holding back to pee until the end of day, each and every day.

The fear of waking up each morning, and facing one’s fate.

The gory task of burning your own kith and kin, and coming across the shaved and naked dead bodies of your dear ones.

The terror of being murdered and not leaving a trace.

The pain of a doctor to hide his skills, when he sees death all around.

He cannot reveal his true identity, he must only be a laborer, who can labor and labor… till he dies.

In me arise several questions, How? What? WHY? Many questions asked in earnest by several, questions that were left unanswered for decades…

But I see and I remember, and so must everyone. For this is Not something to be forgiven or forgotten or repeated ever again.

#WW2