Poznan to Warsaw through Lodz

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

This was our last day in Poland and, as it was only (supposed to be) three hours from Poznan back to Warsaw, we decided to make a couple of stops along the way.

A short drive brought us to Gniezno, a small town with both national and religious importance in Poland.  In the tenth century, various regional tribes came together there to unite as Poles.  A royal baptism and the coronation of the first Polish king in the cathedral raised the town’s religious profile at about the same time. The cathedral’s centerpiece is the elaborate silver sarcophagus of St. Adalbert, a Bohemian missionary bishop who was beheaded while trying to convert less - than - receptive Prussian pagans.  A pair of outstanding twelfth-century bronze doors depicts the life of the martyred saint, and the cathedral also boasts a series of beautiful wrought-iron screens demarcating the side chapels.  Quiet Gniezno also has an attractive central square, which we enjoyed in a light morning mist.

That mist grew into a downpour once we were on our way to Lodz (pronounced woodge), Poland’s third-largest city, and our afternoon stop.  By the time we reached the Manufaktura, it was misty again, and we enjoyed walking around the former textile mill complex, which has morphed into an enormous shopping, entertainment, and office complex.  Part modern shopping mall like hundreds of others, part meticulous renovation, it really was impressive. 

We paid a quick visit to the old city center and then drove to the Radegast Station, just beyond the boundaries of the ghetto, where more than 200,000 European Jews were sealed off. Most of them eventually died, either from starvation or disease in the ghetto, or at extermination camps.  Radegast Station was their point of departure for the camps and it is now a quiet, very moving memorial to the dead.  In addition to displays depicting life in the ghetto and in the camps, there are thousands of pages of the original deportation lists.  Sitting on the tracks are three of the original cattle cars used to transport the suffering to their deaths.  When the Red Army liberated Lodz in 1945, only 880 Jewish survivors remained.  Despite all we know, all we’ve seen and read, it is still unimaginable…

More heavy rain, rural roadways, and lots of road construction slowed our progress back to Warsaw.  We were happy to call it a day and prepare for a long day of air travel tomorrow – Warsaw to Phoenix, via Helsinki and Chicago!  It’s been a great trip, and a real window on two countries’ amazing rebounds after disastrous histories.

 From Tom-Since this is coming to you from Helsinki we have made it this far. A bit of a hitch with our flight from Chicago to  PHX was probably fixed here, but we will see.