Balancing act

Last day in Kraków. We went to the Schindler factory where they have a museum dedicated to telling the story of the local community during World War II and the roundup and subsequent ghettoisation and extermination of Jews. It’s powerfully put together and I was deeply moved. One of the first things the Nazis did was to close the University and lock up the academics, because like all right wingers the German fascists despised the intelligentsia. It made me think of Michael Gove during Brexit and his statement that “maybe people have had enough of experts”; the principle is the same and I made no apology for mentioning the two in the same sentence as they both put the clamour of the mob above the appeal to reason. Brexit was fuelled by irrational hatred and so was the Trump campaign - irrational hatred of black people, gay people, Jewish people, Muslim people, disabled people, and in the case of Brexit irrational hatred of the so called Metropolitan Elite.

I thought the Nazis were a historical phenomenon, but the world is full of the same intolerance today and the dangers are the same; I felt slightly sick in my stomach when we left because it feels like we are on the same slippery slope.

We made a short pilgrimage to the old Jewish cemetery afterwards. The Nazis had shot up the place in 1939. Recovered fragments of tombstones were later defiantly built into the south east wall like a kind of frieze, as if to say that even the dead will stand up against oppression, with a little help from the living.

The other place we visited today was the pharmacy of Tadeusz Pankiewicz, a catholic who stayed in the ghetto in Kraków with the Jews and provided them with medicines and a safe house; he saved many lives and gave a lot of people hope, but is less well known than Oskar Schindler. That’s what I call a role model.

This image was taken on the modern pedestrian bridge over the Vistula, where they have lots of acrobatic sculptures built into the rigging. We first saw it on the Tour of the Jewish Quarter on Sunday and I wanted to take another look at it, because it is the main link between Jewish Kazimierz and the ghetto on the other side of the river that the Nazis created in 1941. Again, it seems to stand in defiance of a terrible history.

By the time we got to the airport around 6.15 we were both a bit tired. Queuing at passport control and looking at the EU symbol I got angry at the thought of not being part of it because of Brexit. I don’t usually swear in print, but fuck you Gove, Farage, Johnson and the rest. You are not role models. You don’t speak for me. I am and always will be a European and, for all its faults, support the project to bring people together across national boundaries and stop another Nazi regime from happening again. It is flawed and frail in realisation but it’s a noble concept that at its best seeks to shelter us all from the worst excesses of humanity. It is a delicate balancing act where a degree of technocracy and some surrendering of national autonomy gives us the chance to be part of the wider and more optimistic European family. Brexit by contrast offers nothing but isolation, intolerance, arrogance, confusion and racism. There are no benefits. It is a long slow walk away from the things that matter and the things that connect us and is loved by modern day Nazis because it means they can exploit nationalist sentiments. But come what may, I am a European and always will be, no matter what happens with Brexit.