I Visited My Grandfather’s Reborn Polish Hometown That Was Destroyed in World Conflict II — Right here’s What I Discovered

I went to Wrocław, Poland, in the hunt for my grandfather, who was born and grew up there, again when this picturesque metropolis on the Oder River was Breslau, Germany. With a listing of his outdated addresses culled from the scattering of papers he’d left behind, I attempted to trace down his former houses. However the German road names had lengthy since been modified to Polish, and the few buildings I used to be capable of find have been all trendy. 

I most likely shouldn’t have been shocked by the frustrations of my genealogical hunt. Although Breslau — not like different German cities like Cologne and Hamburg — made it by way of the primary 5 years of World Conflict II remarkably intact, a Soviet bombing marketing campaign from January to Might 1945 left 80 % of the town in ruins. 

“We are saying solely eighty %,” Rafal Dutkiewicz, Wrocław’s mayor from 2002 to 2018, informed me on the rooftop restaurant of the Resort Monopol Wrocław, “as a result of Warsaw was ninety % destroyed.” 

He gestured out on the pastel façades of the Neo-Baroque buildings beneath us. The Resort Monopol — from whose balcony Adolf Hitler as soon as spoke, and the place luminaries like Marlene Dietrich and Pablo Picasso as soon as stayed — was among the many 20 % of buildings that survived. These constructions are uncommon sufficient that locals level them out, although informal guests would battle to distinguish between them and people which were artfully reconstructed, typically in keeping with the unique plans. 

Breslau’s destruction, it needs to be mentioned, was under no circumstances inevitable. It hinged fully on Hitler’s determination, in late 1944, to designate the town as “Festung Breslau,” Germany’s remaining fortress, which was to be defended in any respect prices towards the approaching Soviets. That was why, after serving as a refuge for folks fleeing areas of extra intense battle for many of the struggle, within the first months of 1945, Breslau was leveled by bombs and tanks. This, mixed with bloody road fights, left tens of hundreds of civilians lifeless. Hitler’s Breslau commander held out till three days earlier than Germany’s unconditional give up to the Soviets. 

My grandfather, a world away in Houston by that time, would by no means see his hometown once more, however I typically puzzled what he will need to have made from the upheavals that continued roiling the area even after the struggle. In July 1945, at Joseph Stalin’s behest, the town was remodeled from German to Polish in a single day, and ethnic Poles in Lwów, which is now the Ukrainian metropolis of L’viv, have been pushed from their houses and transplanted to the town rechristened as Wrocław. The greater than 600,000 Germans who have been dwelling in what had been Breslau have been pushed west. 

No marvel my grandfather’s ghost would show elusive in such a spot. I had hoped to catch a glimpse of him in Salt Market Sq., outdoors the cantaloupe-colored Previous Inventory Alternate palazzo — one of many few remaining unique edifices — the place, a century in the past, his father dealt in grain commodities. Right this moment it looms behind an outside flower market that’s open 24 hours a day. 

My first night time on the town, I sat on a bench outdoors the microbrewery Spiż having fun with an IPA. (Wrocław has no scarcity of microbrews, kombuchas, cold-brew coffees, and vegan/gluten-free/low-carb menu choices.) I marveled on the one way or the other harmonious layering of previous and current that surrounded me. As soon as an essential buying and selling outpost the place the Silk and Amber Roads met, the now totally Polish metropolis has, over the centuries, been dominated by Bohemians, Hapsburgs, Prussians, Nazis, and Communists. And it’s this melding of cultures and influences that makes Wrocław, the nation’s fourth largest metropolis and one of many quickest rising within the European Union, really feel so magical at the moment. Cross the Oder right here — Wrocław, the so-called “Polish Venice,” boasts greater than 100 bridges — and also you’re in Prague; move by way of this gate and you’re in Vienna. Down this road, the towering red-brick put up workplace remembers Weimar Germany. Look to the northeast and there’s “Manhattan,” a Brutalist complicated of economic and residential skyscrapers that’s typical of Iron Curtain–period structure.

After my beer, I continued my explorations within the Rynek, the town’s pastel-rainbow central market sq., which is constructed round a Gothic city corridor that dates again to the tip of the Thirteenth century. In what I thought-about correct Polish trend, I ordered a plate of pierogi on the upscale Pierogarnia. Over the course of the night, I watched a Hare Krishna procession, a lady juggling fireplace batons, a person unicycling on a rope, and a small protest towards oppression in neighboring Belarus. 

I spent the following a number of days on cultural excursions alongside the Oder, together with to the Nationwide Museum of Wrocław, an ivy-covered ex-German municipal constructing that homes one of many nation’s largest collections of up to date Polish artwork, and to Hydropolis, a “water information heart” with academic displays. The remainder of the time I spent having fun with virtually uniformly chic meals.

That was maybe the most important shock of all for me: the constant excellence of Wrocław’s meals. There was the trout risotto at La Maddalena, which presents a shocking view throughout the Oder on the (reconstructed) yellow façade of the college the place my grandfather earned his legislation diploma in 1921. There have been the poached eggs with chili butter and dill at Dinette, adopted by a beet salad at Mleczarina, within the courtyard reverse the not too long ago restored White Stork, the town’s solely synagogue to outlive Kristallnacht. And I actually can’t neglect to say the sunflower pâté and flaky cod at Restauracja Tarasowa, a local-ingredients-​solely restaurant on the heart of Wrocław’s Centennial Corridor complicated, which features a large multimedia fountain that in summer time hosts wild water-and-light exhibits. 

On my final night time in Wrocław, I wandered down an alley full of galleries and artists’ studios to Ruska 46’s Neon Facet Gallery, a cul-de-sac festooned with salvaged neon indicators from defunct film theaters, motels, and industrial vegetation, which additionally (in fact) has a pleasant bar, Recepcja. Afterward, I took a protracted stroll again towards the river, passing dozens of the kitschy bronze gnomes — the town has 600 and counting — that commemorate the Orange Different, the Wrocław-born opposition motion that helped topple Communism within the Nineteen Eighties. I ended my night time on Ostrów Tumski, the “cathedral island,” which has been inhabited for greater than a thousand years. On any given night, you’ll be able to spot clusters of nuns watching the solar dip into the river, younger seminarians strolling previous the rebuilt Thirteenth-century Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, or locals having fun with one more top-notch riverside meal, this certainly one of nouveau-Polish delicacies, at Lwia Brama. 

Ostrów Tumski can be residence to the town’s finest new luxurious lodge, the Bridge Wrocław, which presents stunning river views and (prepare for it) top-quality meals. The Artwork Resort, a standby within the outdated metropolis, is in a transformed tenement, components of which have survived because the 14th century. Throughout the road is the medieval meat market, which, like a lot of Wrocław at the moment, is now a set of small galleries and artisan boutiques. Look carefully and also you’ll discover statues commemorating the animals butchered there over the centuries. 

What would my grandfather, lifeless for greater than half a century now, have considered his hometown, which has undergone so many tectonic adjustments? An inconceivable hypothesis, I accepted early on. He’s gone now, and so is his metropolis; even his father’s grave marker within the New Jewish Cemetery has lengthy since vanished. However then that’s how historical past works — and nowhere so noticeably as on this tortured crossroads of Europe. It razes and remakes and paves over and on prime of what got here earlier than. Generally there’s continuity, generally rupture. However in Wrocław, a tough previous has lastly given method to a spot that feels totally of the long run.  

A model of this story first appeared within the June 2024 subject of Journey + Leisure underneath the headline “Wroclaw Reborn.”