UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
Travelling to other countries is always a good way to broaden your perspective and see the contrasts between your home country and that of others. I was in Krakow, Poland, last week for a three-day pathology conference and again saw how much farther the Philippines is economically and governance-wise.
Poland’s checkered history spans over a thousand years with many tribes settling in the area until, in the early Middle Ages when the dominant Lechitic Western Polans, a tribe whose name means “people living in open fields,” gave Poland its name. Christianity became the adopted religion in 966 CE. As with other European countries, Poland had its share of royalties, the most successful of which was the Jagiellonian dynasty, which saw a union with Lithuania that became one of Europe’s largest countries in 1569.
A period of decline saw the end of the Polish Commonwealth, with the Russian Empire invading and partitioning Polish territory in the east, the Kingdom of Prussia in the west, and the Habsburg Empire in the south. Poland briefly regained its independence in 1918 until it was invaded by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939.
Poland became a satellite Communist country of the Soviet Union in 1945 up to 1989 when its Solidarity Movement became the impetus to the rest of Eastern Europe to throw off the yoke of Soviet Russia. It is now a liberal parliamentary democracy.
Krakow is a city with well-preserved architecture spared from the devastation that reduced Warsaw and Manila to rubble in the Second World War. The historic center of Krakow features medieval and gothic structures, from palaces to the many Catholic churches (Poles are devoutly Catholic) as well as synagogues in the southern part of town. It was such a pleasure walking 20 minutes in six-degree Celsius weather from our hotel to the conference at the Jagellonian University through clean streets, traffic that stopped for pedestrians, and wide paths of the park winding through the town center surrounded by spring flowers like daffodils and apple trees bursting into bloom. I need not say the stark contrast to our dirty, crowded, and unruly metropolis.
The day we arrived afforded time to tour the Wieliczka Salt Mine, a UNESCO World Heritage site. It started with descending 56 flights of stairs until the first of the 20 chambers and ends 135 meters below the earth surface, where there is a church adorned with sculptures of St. Pope John Paul II, a copy of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper, Madonna and Child, a Crucifixion scene, Virgin Mary, an altar and chandeliers, all made of salt. Weddings and concerts are held here, and the reception in another big chamber. The whole place is made of salt, to which I can attest to having tasted the walls.
At the end of the conference first day, we were treated to a dinner by Krakow’s city mayor at the historic Palac Wielopolskich. The dinner was excellent and the wine overflowing.
The next night, we joined a tour of the Jewish Ghetto, and the tour guide told us about the Nazi extermination of 65,000 out of the 69,000 population of this area. Coincidentally, April 19, 2023 is the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, and there were many Hassidic Jews commemorating its memory.
Unfortunately, the tours of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps, another UNESCO World Heritage site, were fully booked. I have seen the movie, “Schindler’s List,” and it’s probably a blessing in disguise that I was spared the depressing sights in person. It’s hard enough to get over the 26,000 deaths of extra-judicial killings locally, let alone the memories of over a million, mainly Jews, who died in the gas chambers as the Nazis’ Final Solution to the Jewish question.
One fact that struck me was the medical experiments done on its prisoners by doctors that resulted in the deaths of its subjects. It is hard to believe that those people took the Hippocratic Oath and still did such horrific acts. But then again, our police swore to uphold the law and ended up violating it.
I had to get back to Manila after three days there for our first face-to-face Philippine Society of Pathologists annual convention in four years. It was great to meet each other again after such a long time, though everyone seemed to have gotten much older, perhaps as a result of the isolation, fear and depression experienced during the pandemic. Or we did age four years naturally. It’s good to be back home, no matter if it’s in a rotten state.