THERE never was a better time to visit Kraków. Classical music concerts continue during September and October in the Church of Sts Peter and Paul and St Giles's church. An exhibition of Jewish artists, 1873-1939, in the Old Synagogue runs until October 31st. Indian summers tend to be golden in central Europe, writes Brendan Ó Cathaoir
The new Poland is vibrant and the people of Kraków still derive invigoration from their former archbishop, Karol Wojtyla, the late pope John Paul II. The Civic Committee for the Restoration of Kraków Heritage announces proudly: "In 1990, activists of the Communist Party and directors of state enterprises were replaced on the committee by art historians, conservators, architects, artists, journalists and the clergy." Churches dominate the Kraków skyline. There are some 40 churches within the historic centre alone, housing a variety of works of art. For instance, the Zygmunt chapel in Kraków Cathedral is regarded as the finest example of Renaissance architecture north of the Alps; the interior of St Anne's church is a leading example of Baroque architecture in Poland.
Wawel Hill is the Polish Acropolis. Its royal castle is Kraków's best museum. The last rulers of the Jagiellonian dynasty transformed the Gothic castle into one of the most magnificent Renaissance residences in central Europe. Although Warsaw became the Polish capital at the end of the 16th century, royal coronations and funerals continued to take place in Kraków.
The adjoining cathedral houses the relics of St Stanislaus, patron saint of Poland. Archbishop Wojtyla described it as "the sanctuary of the nation. . .for here - as in few cathedrals of the world - is contained a vast greatness which speaks to us of the history of Poland".
Planty Park encircles the Old Quarter. The cross beside St Giles's church with a stark inscription, "Katyn 1940-1990", is a memorial to the Soviet massacre of about 22,000 prisoners, including half the Polish officer corps, 20 university professors and 300 physicians. On the city outskirts, the Kosciuszko Mound commemorates Poland's greatest revolutionary hero. Tadeusz Kosciuszko was also a veteran of the American war of independence. In 1848 the Young Ireland emigrant, Charles Hart, drooled over a monument to him in West Point. When calling the Jews of Kraków to arms during the insurrection of 1794, Kosciuszko declared: "The Jews proved to the world that, whenever humanity can gain, they would not spare their lives."
In 1941 the Nazis moved the Jews who remained in Kraków to a ghetto. Some 65,000 were later deported to Auschwitz death camp. A pilgrimage to the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex is a salutary experience. An estimated 1.5 million people were murdered there, 90 per cent of them Jewish, including 200,000 children. On arrival about 25 per cent were considered fit for work; the remainder were led to the gas chambers. Everything about the regime was designed to degrade, terrorise and exterminate.
Birkenau was the largest concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Europe. At the height of the killing, this diabolically conceived murder machine gassed and cremated more than 5,000 people a day. Only some of the original 300 barracks remain, along with the platform where the trains of the Holocaust were unloaded. As the SS realised the end of the war was near, they
attempted to destroy evidence of their atrocities by dynamiting the gas chambers.
The Final Solution envisaged the obliteration of memory. But the Nazis were caught in their own web of deception. The Jews were told they were going to be resettled, so many arrived with belongings. Among the most poignant exhibits in Auschwitz museum are the piles of suitcases (clearly marked), women's hair, shoes and children's clothes. It is awesome to stand at the cell where Fr (now St) Maximilian Kolbe sacrificed his life to save another prisoner. When an inmate escaped from the camp, the Nazis selected 10 others to be killed by starvation in reprisal. Kolbe took the place of one of those chosen.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, commenting on the depths to which human conduct has sunk, quoted a Russian proverb: "Do not believe your brother, believe your own crooked eye." In 1943 the Irish Press claimed with insouciance: "There is no kind of oppression visited on any minority in Europe which the Six County nationalists have not also endured."
Throughout the centuries of adversity Poles were defiantly Catholic. They remain unapologetically so. People of all age groups attend Sunday Masses in impressive numbers.
To understand the central role that Catholicism still holds in Poland a visit to Czestochowa is essential. This former Communist town is dominated by the hilltop monastery of Jasna Góra, custodian of the Black Madonna icon for 600 years. Its special position in the hearts of a majority of Poles is the product of history and myth. Their veneration is linked to the tenuous position Poland has occupied on the map of Europe: the Swedes, the Russians and the Germans have sought to annihilate it. Each of those enemies has laid siege to Jasna Góra yet failed to destroy it, thus adding to the icon's reputation as a miracle-worker and the guarantor of Poland's existence as a nation.
In 1945 Soviet troops defused bombs left by the retreating Nazis which might have finally destroyed the monastery. The Soviets later had cause to regret their action as Jasna Góra became a major focus of opposition to the Communist regime.