To Scottie

By Cara Williams

Anybody who knows me knows how obsessed I am with my niece. At the ripe age of twenty, I have become my mother, talking about her to anyone who will listen. I have shown her picture across three continents this year. My niece is only 1. The only thing she knows is how to clap and how to throw a fit. She thinks I live in the phone of her mother. She doesn’t understand that I think about her each day and hope to tell her about our world. One day, when she is older, I want her to know all about my adventures abroad. I want to fill her mind with fun stories of meeting strangers on nights out and trying strange foods. But this semester I learned there is more I need to tell her. I need to tell her about the incredible people I have met, and all the kindness I have seen. After a semester spent in Poland, I have learned about some of the greatest evil humanity has ever known. Some might call my semester abroad a tragedy tour. I think however, it is a tour of hope. This is what I will tell my niece.

I loved watching “babcia”s, or old Polish ladies in Wroclaw waiting for the tram. They are often wearing elaborate outfits with fancy fur coats and patterned scarves. They never smile at strangers. Polish people love Christmas. They might not go crazy for Halloween like they do in the US, but the Polish Christmas markets make up for it. Wroclaw is full of graffiti. You might think it’s ugly, but when you learn about the history of the silly gnome graffiti that was used to fight Soviet oppression in the 80s, you will appreciate it a bit more. Almost everyone in Poland speaks English. I have twice been helped in the supermarket while talking to a friend on the phone about my confusion on how Polish grocery stores work, thinking I am incognito, and been stopped by a Pole to explain to me in English where to find what I’m looking for.

Like cities in the US, every city in Poland feels completely different. Each town I traveled to had one thing in common, though: I always met someone who loved their city and fought for its residents. In Gdansk, I felt the cold wind from the Baltic sea and met an eccentric architect that reminded my cohort to look at the tops of buildings while walking to appreciate the beauty and told us to enjoy the slow parts of life. I am still not good at this, but I try to savor my slow walks around town now. There is a little city on the Lithuanian border called Sejny, with some of the most artistic individuals I have ever met. Once a hub for Jewish life in Poland, residents now teach the local children about their town’s Jewish, Lithuanian, and Polish history with music and cultural cartoons. Poets also reside there writing political poetry and listening to prose in languages they don’t understand to support artists fighting across eastern Europe. In Krakow, I found a former Jewish quarter kept full of life by small restaurants, art, educational centers, and a preserved synagogue. The cobblestone streets were rugged, and many buildings needed a new coat of paint – proof of the community’s protection of its past.

Though I was only in Poland for three months, I became protective of it quickly. When I traveled to Prague and found myself face to face with a city I almost lived in, I realized how grateful I was to be in Poland instead. I loved my time in Berlin too, but yearned to be back in Wroclaw, a city where I walk across former cemeteries to get lunch every day. I didn’t know anything about Wroclaw until I arrived in Poland; I had even been pronouncing its name incorrectly. Living in the Midwestern suburbs of the US, history seems far and removed from me, but in Wroclaw, I physically saw the marks of history. I was told when I arrived that Wroclaw becomes more beautiful every year because they are still working on rebuilding after the war. I realized that every elderly person I come across in Wroclaw has lived two lives – one under oppressive communist rule and one under a Poland adjusting to capitalism and growing towards the west. I learned about the LGBQ+ community which thrives in Wroclaw despite hateful legislation. To me, Wroclaw is a city for those who overcome.

Warsaw was my least favorite city I visited. In a way, it felt too American – overly commercialized, or like a Hollywood movie set. Though it did not appeal to my aesthetics, it appealed to my intellect. There, I met Konstanty Gebert. I was afraid to meet him, having researched his name and finding that he has lived a life braver than I could fathom. He wore a kippah – the first person I had seen in Poland doing so. He told us stories about his family. His mom, a proper lady who spent WWII fighting with a machine gun for the Soviet military and liberated Majdanek death camp. His grandmother, who voluntarily took the train to a death camp because of horrible guilt for making the choice to stay in Warsaw earlier on in the war. His grandfather, who spent years after the war searching Jewish communities in Poland for his daughter and only found her by chance, while doing a mitzvah, or good deed, at a hospital. As soon as I got back to the hotel that night, I called my mom to tell her everything I learned. I didn’t know why then, but Kostanty’s stories made me want to tell my mom how much I love her. Now, I think his stories reminded me how fragile life is, and I wanted my mom to know my gratitude that she has made me strong enough to believe in chance.

Later, when I took Konstanty’s class in full, I questioned my own impact on my community. I had never met someone who was so unafraid before. Or maybe he was afraid, but he didn’t let it stop him. He trusted other underground activists in Poland during a time when trusting anyone was threatening. When he was thrown into prison multiple times and held for 24 hours, he talked to the petty criminals incarcerated with him.. They told him about their thefts, and he told them that he was fighting for a future in which they wouldn’t have to steal to eat more than bread and vinegar-soaked vegetables. He showed up to class with his kippah proudly every day, which I grew to admire after I learned about the rising antisemitism in Poland. He taught us how the underground printing worked, and said as people that live in a democracy, we need to know how to print and distribute texts, just as all drivers should know first aid in case of an accident. When I am upset at the state of society, I am prone to blaming the system I live in and then move on with my day. Konstanty made me understand that an understanding of injustice is not enough; I need to be prepared to act. I found that the red tape I have always believed made activism impossible for me was a creation of my scared mind, and I refuse to be bound by fear.

It is harder to find hope in other parts of Polish history. Some places are so haunted with pain that when you visit them you think you might be drained for the rest of your life. No matter where I visited – memorials, cemeteries, or a death camp, I was glad to have felt that pain. That pain is good. I was always glad too, that after the silence broke, the air filled with the voices of my classmates and professors who channeled that pain into care and debate about how to remember the past and change the future. In a few hours we would be back to laughing, but the indignation remained with us and still does.

The history of humanity is horribly grim. I could spend my entire life learning about tragic history, both in central Europe and beyond, and never know or understand all the horror. It is hard to believe in a better future when you look around and see injustice in every corner of the world. It is hard to have hope when the ground beneath your feet is haunted. I do, however, have hope. I have hope in the people around me, who offer kindness to strangers without thinking about it. I have hope in the activists I have met who subject themselves to constant evil or persecution in pursuit of protecting others, dead and alive. I have hope in the artists and weirdos who exist publicly and are unaffected by pressures of conformity. I have hope in myself to be a braver person each day, and most importantly, I have hope in you, Scottie. I have witnessed radical acts of kindness and courage. One day, you will be able to do the same and I will watch you in awe.