So, How Are You Enjoying To Krakow (pronounced "Krah-kovf")?

This was a very weird question to answer in that the whole reason that Szonyi and I went to Krakow was to visit Auschwitz, which is an hour and a half south. We bypassed the market square and the cool castle and went right to Auschwitz as soon as we arrived. The visit was sobering and incongruous. The town of Auschwitz (Osterwitz, in Polish) is a thriving industrial town of fifty thousand. It is set in beautiful countryside with lovely birdsong. It was pouring when we first arrived, but then was sunny and lush. Before we went, I was afraid that I would be so moved that I would immediately head off to work in Darfur. Alternatively, I feared just feeling numb. Neither was the case. Although billed as a museum, and some blocks do have exhibits, it is not like Yad VaShem. Auschwitz is itself a place of great evil, not just a commemoration of it, located, ironically, in a banal, bucolic settling. The place is simply too horrible to absorb fully, but it makes a deep impression. Perhaps the biggest impression was left by the piles of items confiscated from the people in the camps: a room full of kitchenware, another full of shoe polish, a third brimming with combs. Each room made me think of the various owners who had packed their most precious belongings to go to Auschwitz. The items made me reflect on how useless our stuff eventually is to us in time of extremity. The rooms of human hair, eyeglasses, prosthetic devices, emphasized the inhumanity and degradation of the place. Really, who could remove a child’s artificial leg without a twinge of guilt at their own brutality? By comparison the gas chamber and the crematoria were more than I could understand. Perhaps it I will be able to process those images better over time.

The sense of disconnection was enhanced because Auschwitz is clearly a place of German creation where many Poles died. Although Poles have a long history of anti-Semitism, and currently have a government that is homophobic, anti-Semitic, and very pro-USA, there wasn’t any point in being mad at Poles. (I did stick it to them a bit in my lecture, when demonstrating the problems of screening jurors for bias, I asked the Polish audience, “Who doesn’t like Jews?” in order to demonstrate that people don’t always fess up to their prejudices. But I digress). The Poles themselves were pleasant, ingratiating to a fault (may have something to do with how we constantly overpaid for cabs and were big tippers at restaurants). As a people, they struck me as friendly, but not polite, the opposite of the English. When we did go to the Market Square we were treated to what I can only hope was a high-school band playing various U.S. pop music. During “I Will Survive” the horn section sounded more like a moose in its death throes. Around the square was very kitschy art of John Paul II, the Madonna and Child, Krakow, and, creepily, Hassidic Jews davening. Looking around at the so-called folk art, I would say that the Poles invented the tchachke, but the word only has two c’s, and no j, y or sz, so I kind of doubt it.

I went to Poland in the first place to deliver a lecture to a fourth year criminal procedure class: “O.J. Killed Two People and the Jury Voted ‘Not Guilty’: What the O.J. Simpson Case Can Teach Us about the American Criminal Jury.” The lecture both fascinated and horrified the students, who are more familiar with the inquisitorial system. To my amazement, the Dean of Warsaw University, who is an expert in forensic law, provided evidence pictures from the O.J. case (bloody glove, white Bronco, etc.). I had a delightful meeting with Bryan Hemming and his wife Ola, who are in Warsaw for the semester. Bryan, a 2L at Indiana, learned Polish on a two-year mission for the Church of Latter Day Saints -- talk about a thankless task, trying to convert Poles to Mormonism when the Pope is Polish! He's returned to Poland as an exchange student. I also met four people who will be coming to Indiana from Warsaw this coming academic year, including Agnieszka who is writing a PhD on sexual discrimination in higher education and works with an NGO defending the rights of refugees, particularly those from Chechnya.

All in all, Szonyi and I had an interesting time. Perogies were great, as was the borscht and mushroom soup. We felt out of place speaking not a word of Polish. It will be some time before we can fully absorb the gastly and haunting images of Auschwitz.