Polish Islam

It felt like it was taking forever. The surroundings reminded me of the drives on rural Whidbey Island back in Washington state. Heavily wooded, straight and tedious. I had the role of driving for the first time after over a year hiatus, and it was reminding me how much I didn’t miss it. The town of Supraśl was the only major highlight on the road, and another indication we were no longer in the heart of Polish Catholicism, being the location of one of only six Eastern Orthodox Monasteries in Poland. 45 kilometers east of Białystok, we took a right in Krynki, and suddenly the way got more exciting. A small undulating road brought us closer to the heart of Islam in Poland. The Tatar village of Kruszyniany.

The village is nestled between a forest of oaks and pines, and the defining feature is the green Mosque, built with elements of Christian architecture, making it one of the most interesting combinations of sacred architecture in Poland. Imagine a small Romanesque church with two towers, except instead of a pale stone exterior, the outside is painted green, and the apexes of the towers have a crescent moon rather than a cross. The structure is wooden, and the current one dates from the 18^th century, built over a pre-existing Mosque. Currently the village is home to only about 160 people, and not all of them are Tatar. Right now, there is estimated to be somewhere around 2,000 Polish Tatars, and almost 15,000 Tatars in the region, if you include Lithuania and Belarus. Historically, at its peak, the population of the Tatar community numbered around 200,000. That was about 500 years ago and it included territories of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which pushes the Polish border much farther east than the current one. 

The speaker in the Mosque
Photo taken by the author

While we were there, the village was flooded with Polish tourist. Encumbering buses ejected their passengers onto the gravel in front of the Mosque, where they congregated, waiting to snap a selfie in front of the green edifice. We snuggled up with a group entering the Mosque, and made our way inside, taking off our shoes and feeling the softness of the rugs beneath our feet. Sitting down, we listened to a lecture by a humorous Polish Tatar about the history of his community in Poland. His features subtly held some Asiatic essence, hinting at his ancestry from the Central Asian steppe. According to him, the Tatars were given land, and allowed to marry the local woman, in return for protecting the frontier region and fighting in military campaigns. This village really felt like a frontier region. The border to Belarus is less than 6 kilometers away, and felt malleable and undefined, being without any strong geographical distinction. Adding to that feeling was the categorical split between western oriented Poland and eastern oriented Belarus.

After listening to his tale, we took our time to look around the quaint wooden interior. The air was deep and refreshing, and the walls were festooned with frames of tapestries, in them depicting the Kaaba in Mecca, and proclaiming that “There is no god but Allah and Muhammed is his prophet” in Arabic script. We followed the group of Polish tourists, who seemed humbled by the experience of diversity in their homeland, towards the graveyard that lay at the end of the gravel road. Graveyards always hold some sort of key to history. They are the public records that reveal, without a doubt, the existence of a pre-established community. Though it has been tried, deliberately destroying them to erase that history is not so easy. Many times the remains are able to make a comeback through renovation or reconstruction. The Nazi’s tried to destroy the signs of a Jewish past, but you can still find many Jewish cemeteries throughout Poland, attesting to the existence of the substantial Jewish communities that once populated the land. Furthermore, look at the cemetery of the Defenders of Lwów at Lychakiv cemetery in Lviv, Ukraine, revealing the Polish past of that city. I even wrote about the German’s buried in Nidzica, in the northern Mazury region of today’s Poland, revealing its historic connection to East Prussia. Every cemetery reveals parts of an undeniable past, and simultaneously they play a part in reminding us about our inexorable transient future.

The Muslim tombstones of Kruszyniany could be characterized in different categories. Some of them were very similar to the black stones you would find in a typical Polish cemetery, but lacking the cross, and instead having the inscription of Allah, or some other Arabic writing, or just the crescent and star engraved on the stone. Others would be written in Cyrillic, attesting to the time that the Russians ruled this land from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century. And others would have a more distinct character, different from anything I’ve seen in Poland or Russia, made from little stones and being half the size of the regular tombstones.  

For over 500 years Tatars have been burying their dead on this land. We were witnessing their existence in a country that, at the current moment, is having such a hard time acknowledging the good qualities of other identities besides their own martyred Catholic one. It’s a threat to stability and cooperation that Polish Catholic nationalism is rising and attempting to bury the beautiful mosaic that once was the frontier lands of Mitteleuropa, but it’s comforting to see many groups, like the tourists visiting Kruszyniany, are making an attempt to discover the layers of Poland’s diverse past.

Inside the Mosque
Photo taken by Kasia Kaczmarska

100 Years Later

We were standing between two countries, yet not really in no man’s land. On one side were the mountainous Slovak lands, and on the other were the low river-plains of Poland. We had just exited the undergrowth of a Beskid Niski forest onto a paved road, and were now taking a mental breather, looking at the dual existence of the countries signs, before we would reenter the foliage and continue on the other side of the road.  

The Beskid Niski Mountains are a low lying sub-range of the greater Beskid Mountains that stretch from the corner of the Czech Republic, along the Polish-Slovakian border, and into Ukraine. This greater Beskid range then evolves into the much greater Carpathians which inhabit a large chunk of central and eastern Europe. It’s the mountain range where, because of Bram Stoker, bloodcurdling screams could be heard from Dracula’s castle while he bit the necks of his innocent victims. Luckily we weren’t anywhere near Transylvania.

Our hike was taking us through Gorlice county, where, 100 years ago from that day, a great offensive was being produced on the Eastern Front of World War 1. The group that organized this war-themed hike was named Studenckie Koło Przewodników Beskidzkich or SKPB.

As a group of about 25 of us trampled through the unseen path, following our well-trained guides, I looked at the backpack in front of me, and it started to transform into a ragged rucksack being carried by a Hungarian soldier, with clanking metal pots hanging off of it and a bayoneted rifle being held, poking out languidly towards the ground on the left side of the soldier, and our guides morphed into the commanders dragging us to the battlefields through the uncharted thick forests, where we would most likely fall victim to another bayonet and breath our last breath.

100 years ago the Gorlice-Tarnów offensive was taking place exactly in these mountains. This great offensive came after depressing futile attempts by the Austro-Hungarians to push the Russians back towards Ukraine. The commanders of the Austro-Hungarian armies had needlessly thrown many young soldiers into extreme mountain climates during the height of winter with little thought, causing many helpless and painful deaths. But, as winter dissipated, and conditions became easier to deal with, the Germans joined the Austro-Hungarians on the Eastern Front, and on May 2^nd, 1915, began pushing the Russians back through Gorlice county.

On May 2^nd, 2015, our group stopped in front of two mass graves hidden behind some trees. They were quadrilateral stone structures with bulky half-meter orthodox crosses, symbolizing that they were Russian soldiers. There were two stone plaques commemorating them, but it read in German, “Fallen in the field of honor, 150 Russian soldiers.” Lying beneath us were almost 300 Russian skeletons (the other plaque stated 130 Russian soldiers), but above ground the stone structure had been built by the Austro-Hungarians. At every cemetery we stopped at this would be the case. Most of them were mixed with Austrian, Polish, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Slovakian, German, and Russian soldiers, but all them were built by the Austro-Hungarians, and this concept of indiscriminately honoring soldiers during war, regardless of if they were the enemy or not, was beautifully enchanting.

The cemetaries in the region we were hiking had all been designed by a Slovak architect named Dušan Jurkovič. In designing them he took inspiration from the folk art of the surrounding Łemko people, who were the majority of the inhabitants of this area in 1915. Construction of these cemeteries began during the offensive, and most of them finally finished in 1918. The multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire that produced them no longer existed. For the next three quarters of a century the Łemkos were relocated under communist Poland, so the area became depopulated, and the cemeteries fell into dilapidation. In the late 80s old cemeteries began to be rediscovered in forests that had grown over them, and throughout the 90s restoration projects took place that brought their existences back to reputable and honorable standards. Now they exist as hauntingly contemplative monuments.

We started in Grab, which sat isolated on a soft grassy hillside. There was a wooden structure built in the style of an old Slavic pagan temple. There was something eerie and mystifying about the shape, as though it was a long lost memory of the past. The headstones were wooden crosses, and here there was a mix of Russian and Austro-Hungarian soldiers. Next were the Russian mass graves at Ożenna, and then through the thick beech forests towards the former village of Czarne. This valley had once been populated by Łemko families, and even one gypsy family, but during communist times after the Second World War the population was moved to Soviet Ukraine and North-West Poland, and now there is only small clues that an entire community once lived there. We moved north towards Krzywa, and after a cold night, Kasia and I decided to split from the group, and head to the valley over, where we were in touch with a group from Warsaw that owned an old Łemko cottage in the village of Nowica.

On the road to Nowica, before hitting the Magura Małastowska pass, we were able to spot a little salamander that was famous in this region. It’s black and yellow and named the fire salamander. They are slow moving, and very poor at hiding, and we found one with its head buried in a crack in an old stump every few meters. The path we were on was incredibly scenic and the mist caused by the weather made our way mystical and imaginative. At the pass we reached the last cemetery that we would see on this trip. Between the spruce and silver firs the headstones of Poles, Ukrainians, Hungarians and Austrians protruded from the ground. Here there was even one Jewish headstone, also carved from wood; the only one we saw at any of the cemeteries. We took a moment to think about the consequences of this brutal opening to the 20^th century, and how these cemeteries have changed this landscape forever, and then we moved on towards Nowica. On the paved road we climbed up over the hill and as we were climbing we noticed a dead salamander on the road, squished by a car. A few meters later another one laid crushed with its guts exposed, and then another one and another one. Kasia began to shake, and she grabbed my arm and closed her eyes. As we passed another dead salamander I was reminded of the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of young men who were not prepared to face the modern environment that was developing quickly before them. 

WW1 Cemetery in Southern Poland

Lviv and Lwów, a European Palimpsest pt 1

Sitting across the table from me at the Kumpel’ gastropub and microbrewery near the center of Lviv was my host, Ivan. He was young, fit, and precocious, but often held his clenched fist hard against his left cheek, trying to hide the fact that he was cross-eyed. Ivan came from a Russian speaking family, and it was hard to get out of him whether he identified more as a Ukrainian or a Russian, but he explained to me that it would be wise not to use Russian in Lviv. 

With his fist still pressed against his cheek he told me, “Last week I hosted someone from Russia, and nobody would help her in the streets, because she was speaking only Russian. The opposite happened when I hosted a woman from Germany. She spoke English and everyone helped her.” I responded that despite knowing Russian I wouldn’t attempt to speak it in Lviv. Instead I would try my luck with bad Polish and some English.

***

There was a sign that pointed me the direction that I was intending to go, and I turned right down a sinuous cobblestone road. The sun is low on the blue horizon, even though it was midday. Its beams were cutting through the air around me making the weather crisp and invigorating. Suddenly the 19^th century building façade to the left disappeared and opened up to a vast empty contemplative square that evoked a feeling of the eternal. Across the square I saw a small stone wall, and the vibrant blue and yellow Ukrainian flag flying high next to a war memorial with bright bouquets of plastic flowers. Peeking out just beyond the low stone wall were the headstones of the Lychakiv cemetery.

I paid the few hryvna to enter, and the extra in order to take some photographs, then I grabbed a map and eagerly started my little expedition. Lychakiv is one of the oldest cemeteries in Europe, being founded in 1786. The great Pere Lachaise in Paris was first opened 18 years later in 1804. I spent most of my time looking for people that I might recognize, or trying to find the headstones that the map I bought recommended to me.  When I saw a unique sculpture I took a picture and tried to decipher who that person was and what he or she did to deserve such enchanting recognition after death.

There’s something humbling about wandering around such a cemetery, surrounded by the beauty, the inspiration and the expression of death. In a place like this it’s impossible not to put things into perspective. Every sculpture, every headstone represents the life of someone. From their resting place there evolved a new form, an immutable shape chiseled by a local artist to keep the memory of the withered body’s life alive forever. The most remarkable thing about walking here among the dead is the intense appreciation one begins to feel for life. The sound of the birds chirping becomes more pronounced, and the deep colors of brown, green and gray create a subtle longing. It is easy to contemplate love and poetry. Each individual stone is megalomaniacal yet at the same time admirable, and indubitably the eclectic pieces of art that you stumble upon in the great cemeteries of the world are always extraordinary.

My camera suddenly notified me that it could no longer read my memory card. This prompted me to take a more observant stroll, without being preoccupied with photography, listening to the rustling of the ivy on the trees and silence permeating from the stone graves. The beauty of this part of the world, the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, struck me hard.

I headed towards the sub-cemetery within Lychakiv that is dedicated to Polish war heroes who fought for Poland against the Soviets, as well as in other battles, during the years of the Republic between the two World Wars. This drives home the fact that this city does not have a linear past. There are layers upon layers of influence, and there is not one singular identity that exists in its history. Controlled initially by the Kingdom of Ruthenia, then the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as by the Habsburgs, the Republic of Poland, the Soviet Union, and Ukraine; there is much diversity to be admired. In the cemetery you can see headstones from every epoch, with names like Franz von Hauer, the governor of the Kingdom of Galicia during the rule of the Austro-Hungarian empire; Ivan Franko, one of the most prominent writers in Ukrainian and a great reformer of the language; Artur Grottger, a great Polish painter known for painting epic battles; Viktor Chukarin, one of the first of the abundant and talented Soviet gymnasts.

Sectioned off with its own wall, I entered the monotone Cemetery of Eaglets, as it’s known in Polish. There were rows of diminutive white stone crosses with slim red and white bands wrapped around the top of the cross, each with a name of one of the men, and if possible some relevant information.  I read some of the names. Jerzy Sieradzki, age 19, student at the polytechnic university; Bolesław Wizimierski, age 47, second lieutenant in the Polish Army; Rozwadowski, age unkown, occupation unknown.  There were hundreds more.

This part of the cemetery was bulldozed by the Soviets in 1971 to make way for new apartments, a good statement about the attitude of the Soviet empire towards local and national identity. But luckily the buildings were never realized, and in 2005 renovation  was completed by the Ukrainian government (how it looked in 1997) and it was reopened (how it looks now), showing goodwill to their Polish neighbor. It’s a beautiful and quiet place, and it shows the profound importance that this city still has in Polish history, being once the third largest city in the nation, behind Warsaw and Łódź. Polish citizens make the trip often to Lviv to see a city that they often associate as a symbol of Poland’s historical glory.

Link to part 2

Photo taken by the author