Thursday 25 February 2010
Poles and Jews: Nostalgia...
Yes, sensitive topic. I found this on the web as a reaction on a You-Tube video from VICTORHRZ in search after his family roots in Lodz.
"Really nice footage, even if i did not understand a word ;) Have to say as a modern citizien of Lodz that i am really sorry that curently our city misses so much of it's past. In 1939 one of four Lodz citizens was Jewish, there also was a lots of Russians and Germans. Poles as me were only in about 30%. During the war Germans destroyed almost all sinagogues.Some of them were really unique architecture.I hope Jews will come back sometime to Lodz, and someday we will be able to live together again"
That's strange enough what I feel in Lodz which is obviously so much a Jewish city... still... but without really having a Jewish community who matter...
Something is missing...
They say the Poles where indifferent about the fate of the Jews in WW II, and even hostile... If so, tragic choice at the wrong moment. But if not, what will had been able to do them against the absolute brutality and virulent aggression of the Nazis?
The Polish left wing activist and politician Sierakowski has formulated this feelings in a compelling monologue in an empty stadion in Warsaw. There he is an actor in a performance, so in an art piece, called 'Mary Koszmary' (Nightmares) by Yeal Bartana. (I mentioned this already earlier, see Mir i Wieza (Wall and Tower) for a description and more details)
The nice thing is that Stawomir Sierakowski, although being an actor at that very moment, exactly says what he actually means and stands for...
Yeal Bartana expresses the mutual bond from Polish society and the Jews also in another symbol...
but.... BUT!.... Love is...
"Really nice footage, even if i did not understand a word ;) Have to say as a modern citizien of Lodz that i am really sorry that curently our city misses so much of it's past. In 1939 one of four Lodz citizens was Jewish, there also was a lots of Russians and Germans. Poles as me were only in about 30%. During the war Germans destroyed almost all sinagogues.Some of them were really unique architecture.I hope Jews will come back sometime to Lodz, and someday we will be able to live together again"
That's strange enough what I feel in Lodz which is obviously so much a Jewish city... still... but without really having a Jewish community who matter...
Something is missing...
They say the Poles where indifferent about the fate of the Jews in WW II, and even hostile... If so, tragic choice at the wrong moment. But if not, what will had been able to do them against the absolute brutality and virulent aggression of the Nazis?
The Polish left wing activist and politician Sierakowski has formulated this feelings in a compelling monologue in an empty stadion in Warsaw. There he is an actor in a performance, so in an art piece, called 'Mary Koszmary' (Nightmares) by Yeal Bartana. (I mentioned this already earlier, see Mir i Wieza (Wall and Tower) for a description and more details)
The nice thing is that Stawomir Sierakowski, although being an actor at that very moment, exactly says what he actually means and stands for...
Yeal Bartana expresses the mutual bond from Polish society and the Jews also in another symbol...
a combination of the Polish eagle with the star of David....
but.... BUT!.... Love is...
Monday 8 February 2010
The Kutno-experience
On my way to Rotterdam... Two and a half hour waiting in... Kutno.
So hiding in the station restoration.
Couldn't not read the menu and choose by chance Vlaki which turns out to be soup from paunch. (cow flatulence) It smells like what it is and the taste brings me the remembrance back of boiling old and dirty socks. (yes, in the old days)
But it was nevertheless nutritive. So, don't understand me wrong: nothing incorrect!
These pictures are the result of "me being bored".
"Fresh fruit", my table
the restoration
my 'Vlaki' soup
somebody had eaten there already...
Poles, having a meal, have been concentrated and silent
my other neighbour
"Greenery", the table of my neighbour (when he has left)
everybody has left
And then I didn't tell you about the young man, open, friendly face, who began to talk to me just at the moment I started to read my book...
Don't know, seemed to me more or less drunk... asked me about six times what was my name... had been in the Netherlands, 35 years old, two daughters at home... broken window in the house, couldn't effort to repair it... finally asking some money...
I am dead, he ended his monologue. Yes, I am dead...
Intermezzo
Sunday the 7th I went back to Holland, Rotterdam for preparing the project further; arranging all necessary things and supplies and so on.
March 8 I will travel back to Lodz again and then we will start effectively the Baluty - Baluty project. On the move!
In between I will continue this blog. Quite something to tell about the progress we made and the people we met, which is not on the blog yet.
For now just a few impressions from my journey yesterday.
Lodz Kaliska
L'heure bleue ... Ah, the old Érich Rohmer...
Can you understand that I start to love Poland?
And then I didn't tell you from the tiny stiff hare, who obviously didn't very well these winter and who was hiding in the thicket along the rail and started running in the open field because of the train and then the fox I saw waiting for this events to happen running after him with his long thick beautiful tail waving behind him...
Saturday 6 February 2010
Wednesday 3 February 2010
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