The Polish brain drain

The stars have departed

My hotel stands on the site of one of the grandest palaces in Warsaw which was taken down in the 60s.

I was afraid that the supposed migration of Poles to better paying jobs in Western Europe might impact on the quality of service that one would encounter in the hotel and other places.

Things have been alright, though the phone probably rings up to 10 times before someone picks up the phone at the front desk, I even had to call to have a “Do Not Disturb” notice sent to my room to prevent housekeeping staff from opening my door especially if I was perchance in a state of indecent exposure.

I have stayed in many a 5* hotel, but I sometimes feel the stars in my current hotel have emigrated to Western Europe too.

Nowhere was this fear of the brain, skills and knowledge drain of Poland more evident than when I walked across the Pilsudski (Victory) Square to the trendy bar on the ground floor of a Norman Foster building (Biurowiec Metropolitan Building, Warsaw) – all the bartenders were busy flipping bottles delivering exotic vodka cocktails with aplomb.

The bar did not have a sherry, not a drop, then I asked for a port and the bartender did not know what a port was – I settled for an orange juice as I waited for the abatement of rain to return to the relative sophistication of my hotel.

PAWIAK!

Of evil and good

Whilst man can be capable of heartfelt selfless and incomparably magnanimous good, their propensity for unimaginable and abominable evil cannot be discounted.

In Poland, I had planned to see some of the machinations of the Nazi and Russian occupation of a country and people who for hundreds of years fought to gain self-determination and only just attained it in 1989 after the fall of Communism.

An English expatriate who sold up in England and moved to live in more affordable Poland offered to take me to a site that featured the deepest and darkest memories of man’s inhumanity to man.

Pawiak (Peacock) Prison

Pawiak Prison which was built by the Russians in the early 19^th century as a political prison and a entry point for Poles that would eventually be sent to the gulags of Siberia.

The Russians, Poles after their first independence 1918 and finally, the Nazis used this prison for all sorts of devilish inquisition and unspeakable torture.

The main elements of the sprawling prison that extended the whole length of the street above ground has disappeared as the perpetrators of evil tried to obliterate evidence of their deeds, but the underground cells have been converted into a museum now called the Mausoleum of Memory of Martyrdom and the Pawiak museum.

Memories, dark memories

As I approached the museum, memorial stones of groups that were persecuted in the prison lined the outer walls and there stood eerily, a tree without leaves – now replaced with a fibre-glass replica as the original tree is being infused with chemicals to give it a more enduring quality – with little posters which I later learnt to be obituary notices.

Down into the cellar, one long corridor with cells on either side where the occupancy of two was usually bumped up 14 in some cases. Spartan and barren those cells were, the social rooms were really communal places were people visited toilets in the presence of everyone else.

Refusing mental slavery

Then one room with relics of an age so palpable, rosaries made from hardened bread, poetry too grim and yet full of hope because of the enduring power of having breath to dream, to wish, to desire and above all pain able to keep true to a quest and aspiration for liberty and freedom.

This prison did not house criminals, rather, it was the minds and brains of Poland, the intellectuals, people who were emancipated who allowed their God-given ability for self-determination to gain ascendancy over the peasantry of the many who allow themselves to be lead by the nose by every trendy doctrine including the most heinous ones.

Like Bob Marley once sang - emancipate yourselves from mental slavery - no matter the cost as that is what makes us men and separates us from animals.

A death carnival of men

37,000 of these people perished in this prison and 60,000 were sent to concentration camps. Basically, totalitarianism and despotic regimes cannot countenance independent thought because it is the predisposed entitlement of men to live free of bondage and repression.

After signing the visitors’ book, I went into the main museum which showcased the many concentration camps that thrived in Poland – Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór, Treblinka and Warschau where 200,000 non-Jewish Poles perished at the hands of the Nazis.

Too much for me

When, I got to one end of this room, the back wall was filled with portraits of persons who were believed to have died in this prison, I could not look at anymore of the stuff in the museum again, I had to get out, it is unimaginable what went on in that prison over 60 years ago, thankfully, the doors or the walls could not talk, but places where innocent blood has been spilt can never keep silent and will never sleep.

I felt the weight of the place and the price that many paid for the freedoms we now take for granted and are ready to give up for the temporary safety from terrorism real and contrived.

Our duty to rise in honour

And we all citizens of this world, beneficiaries of this great emancipation of humanity from savagery to enlightened civilisation, who have hardly had to fight to the death for any of the rights we now enjoy denigrate the many who were sacrificed and martyred for the selfsame fundamental human rights subsuming our objectivity and logical analysis to accepting the patently unacceptable.

The illegal wars, the rape of Zimbabwe, the troubles in Darfur, the abuse of democracy in Nigeria, the plight of the Palestinians, the men who still seek freedom all around the world – all these take lightly the great sacrifices of fellow human-beings hardly a century before.

I sometimes wonder if we would ever learn from history not to commit the same mistakes, my visit to Pawiak convinces me that we have not, I do wonder what the eventual visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau would teach me.

Never forgotten

However, since men learnt to record events in writing, sketching and photography, we cannot wilfully ignore the realities of times past, the smiling guards, the medical staff and the suffering people – the history of mankind in a microcosm of evil.

To Pawiak memories and many places like this, we owe, if only a fraction, no matter how minuscule, our freedom to express ourselves.

Thank you!

Warsaw arising

A tourist itinerary

My first day in Warsaw was interesting as I spoke with the concierge about what interesting things to do and see in Warsaw.

My hotel room on the 7^th floor overlooks the Saxon Garden and work commencing on the restoration of the Saxon Palace, the excavations now showing the old foundations.

After a chat to the concierge, I decided on the Warsaw tour, the guide would pick us up at 13:45, so I had time to kill before that rendezvous.

A quick walk down to Tourist Office for the Warsaw Tourist Card which I might not use, but is useful if I do need to get into one of the museums listed along my way.

A tourist dilemma

As I got to the ramparts of the Old Town, a girl accosted me and requested I stop to talk, I remonstrated saying there was no reason to stop; these squares are full of people trying to con tourists, sometimes you have to be quite assertively uncooperative – the best way is to keep walking and they eventually would fall away.

She had a good story, a university rag day where they to make people smile and engage in some social interaction, the accosted party rates them between 1 to 10 eventually parting with cash for some nondescript children’s charity and signing a form recording this meeting. That is a smart confidence trick if I ever saw one and I got fleeced and ended up with a candle souvenir.

Hardly had I been done over by this lady a man who had been waiting in line came over to tell me a sorry tale about prison, unemployment, food and shelter.

I do not like hearing these tales, I am not the social services and really as a tourist, it is none of my business however hard these people try generate empathy for their circumstances, it is a complete put-off as it sometimes gets aggressive.

Give it me back

I gave him something only to be confronted with the effrontery of it not being enough – You must be kidding me – I doubt if anyone had ever given him as much before I did, but because I could be that generous I sometimes get taken for dork – that really angers me.

On some occasions I have asked to be given back my money and they should go bother someone else, that usually jolts them back to reality, but this time, the only thing I could muster with a loud voice in the crowded square was – I am just a tourist in Warsaw, your problem is not my problem; the last part became a chorus repeated three times as I walked away and he also fell away.

The next little kid who crossed my path with a mendicant’s countenance stiffened by parental guidance got menaced with my cane swinging in offensive poise; I was not going to suffer this stuff gladly anymore.

Getting back on tour

I made it back for the hotel in time to catch a nap and then meet up for the tour of Warsaw which started off as a tour of hotels where only the English and Germans kept time and others kept us waiting for up to 15 minutes and did not utter a greeting talk less of an apology as they boarded the bus.

In fact, I thought it would b a bus tour but it included a two hour walk in different places, so the first walk was through the Park Lazienkowski towards the Palace on the Water which we entered and strangely everyone but those with canes had to wear shoe protectors.

The heavens opened as we roamed the rooms and corridors, this weekend is not expected to exhibit the best of sunny weather even though it would get hot and very humid.

Polish angst weaved into a guided tour

Funny quips about shape of the parliament building looking like circus but the circus really being in the chamber or the some federal building with a yellow colour being a banana republic got us all laughing; the Poles can make fun of themselves.

We called at the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto heroes and heard about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Warsaw Uprising and there have been quite a few in 1794, 1830 and lately 1944 - before we ended up at the Warsaw Old Town where we sought refuge for quiet contemplation in a reconstructed church from the elements before we returned to our hotels.

As interesting as the tour was, along with the very friendly people I met, much of what I gleaned from the tour guide was Polish angst, Polish suffering, the equating of their history to that of the Jews and their more consuming hatred of the Russians over the Germans.

At least the Germans have tried to apologise for the Nazi occupation and Jewish persecution, it would appear Russia is still too big to recognise that they had done Poland wrong, not to talk of the fact that Western Europe went to war with Germany over Poland and then sold them out to the Soviet influence at the Yalta Conference.

Today, I should do something cultural like a Frederic Chopin recital and something scientific about Marie Skłodowska-Curie, both Polish born who emigrated to Paris at some point in their lives.

So far so good.

Walsall born in Warsaw pact

Cities, names and airports

Once and for all, I decided to deal with the confusion especially when a silly immigration officer at London Heathrow Airport was trying to be smart and catch me out by asking if I was born in Warsaw when it says Walsall in my passport and then saying Walsall, London?

Walsall is near Birmingham; sometimes these people really make you want to blurt out a derogatory expletive followed with a throttling of the neck.

But then, the many times I have said I was born in Walsall, people have automatically said Warsaw, Poland and I have had to explain why the cities sound alike but are almost a thousand miles apart.

So having a long weekend from work because the company has compulsory holidays on Friday and Monday, my mind went into overdrive as to what to do this weekend.

Get off the beaten track and do something new, I thought, check for a good Accor hotel and then flights, by the time I knew it, the hotel taxi was picking me up from the Warsaw Frederic Chopin Airport (Formerly Okecie Airport) at the spanking new Terminal 2.

This place was not like that dreadful, rotten, horrible and atrocious London Heathrow which is patently not fit for purpose, the atmosphere was easy only that we missed strains of the piped music of Chopin.

I should start planning my itinerary though I would not be able to do either Auschwitz or Treblinka which are miles away from Warsawa, but I would do my best to get a good view of the Poles and hopefully would not run into those twins.