Ireland from a Polish perspective

Tonight I am coming back to Ireland after 2 weeks in Poland. This time I went to Poland for kind of rest, and my lungs treatment but it was very busy time - as usual.

Day after my arriving in my home city - Łódź (Woodch) - I devoted Friday afternoon to nice girl - an Irish Examiner journalist. She came to Łódź on purpose of writing the article about the factories that moved from Ireland to Poland recently, trying to answer the question, will the newly opened factories and increasing number of vacancies keep Poles in Poland, or rather it won’t? There is a couple of them - Dell, Indesit, Gillette, and Procter and Gamble (they have shut down factory in Nenagh and just have opened new one in Aleksandrów Łódzki - satellite town of Łódź).

Unfortunately, heads of the factories weren’t willing to talk with her, and she had appointments only with city authorities. Our local authorities presented her a false, too far overoptimistic picture of my town - which is still 2nd biggest city in Poland.

Piotrkowska Street

Piotrkowska Street

Liberty Square, former protestant church today is a catholic one.

Liberty Square, former town hall, today it is a Archaeology Museum

Liberty Square, statue of Tadeusz Kościuszko, one of the biggest Polish heroes. (check wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ko%C5%9Bciuszko)
Łódź is one of the youngest towns in Poland. In the beginning of 19th century, there were only about 500 citizens, but at the end of the same century, there was couple of hundred thousands. Short history of the town is very interested especially due to its industrial and multinational character. Modern city was founded mostly by Jewish and German factory owners, who built their industrial properties on the road to Piotrków. This former road, is a main and most representative street of Łódź, and it is well known both in Poland, Germany and Russia.

In the 19th century, Poland was divided between 3 powers - Russia, Germany, and Austria. Łódź, was on the very west part of the Russian empire, and was the biggest textile industry centre in the Central Europe. The city was a crucible of many cultures and nations - Poles (mostly workers, but also teachers, doctors, architects), Germans (factory owners, traders, engineers, teachers, printers), Jews (mostly traders, factory owners, and many of poor people occupying a poor part of the town - Bałuty) and Russians (the smallest element - mostly traders). All those nations used to coexist in a relative peace. There is an interesting fact - many German citizens of the town, changed their sens of ethnicity, and in the beginning of 20th century many of them claimed to be Polish. Anyway… there was a great conception that overwhelmed ethnicity - a conception of a local citizen - Lodzermensch - which means (in German) a man from Łódź. All nations were co-operating together. The first local newspaper - Lodzer Anzeiger - was bilingual (German and Polish). The 2nd local newspaper - Lodzer Zeitung - was only German, but was printed till the begining of the 2nd World War, when Germans changed the name of the town to Litzmannstadt, and the newspaper became official Nazi propaganda.

Johan Petersilge - German printer is buried on the Old cemetery.

Pomorska Street - One of the palaces of factory owners families. Building is falling into ruin, in a couple of years there won’t be anything to save. It is CITY CENTRE…

Revolution 1910 Street, great house with the remains of trade signs in Russian and Polish. Signs are about 100 years old.

All nations were helping each other, e.g. during erecting catholic cathedral founds were donated both by catholic, protestant, jewish and russian orthodox population and factory owners. The same thing was quite common during erecting temples of other religions.
Though, after 1st World War, and reborn of a state of Poland, many of Germans (who still claimed to be German) had left the town, the beginning of the suicide is the beginning of the 2nd World War when Poland was invaded from both sides by Germany and Russia (ok… they say Soviet Union) and betrayed by its allies - France and England.

Revolution 1910 Street, City centre - old house not renovated since times prior 2nd World War. You can see old sign in Yidish (or Hebrew). There was a Jewish asylum/hospital for poor Jews.
Germans took the town, and big part of its local population became devoted nazis. They incorporated west part of Poland into 3d German Reich, and they changed the name of the town (Lodz - was commonly known in Germany) to Litzmannstadt (after general Litzmann who died near Lodz, during one of the battles of 1st World War). Poles became slaves and 2nd category folk. Jews, were closed behind the barbed wire fence of 2nd biggest in Poland gettho. Germans placed it in the traditionally Jewish and the oldest part of the town - Bałuty (the place where I live). Gettho in Łódź with its enormous Jewish population was one of the biggest textil industries working for German army. Łódź hasn’t been destroyed during the war, so gettho survived in its almost unchanged form till today. Despite of the profits and benefits of the Gettho, Germans were conducting a policy of systematically extermination of Jewish population. In the begging they rely on natural factors as diseases and famine that spread throughout that overcrowded district of the town, but later they started to kill them in a industrial way. Jews from Łódź were systematically sent via Radegast Station (old siding changed into gettho station) to Chełmno on Ner river, where Germans built a temporary death camp on purpose of extermination Jews from Lodz.

Radegast Station (Bahnhof).

Radegast Station, originall German freight car used to transport people to death and concentration camps

They were killed in a mobile gas chambers - specially prepared vans with a chambers supplied by exhaust fumes. Later Germans built a regular gas chambers and crematories. Gettho and its Jews survived till late 1944 when almost all of them were sent to Auschwitz. Germans left about 1000 Jews on purpose of tidy up emptied ghetto. They intended to execute those 1000 in the Jewish cemetery (which is the biggest in Europe), they even dug massgraves for them, but the town was taken by Russian Red Army. Germans made something other before Russians came. There was an old factory changed to the criminal prison, a small concentration camp for Poles. On the day when Russian tanks appeared on the east outskirts of the town, there were couple of hundred prisoners. Germans set the fire, and all of them burned alive (survived only 2 or 3 of them). Today the ruin of the factory is a war monument.
So… one of the local nations almost completely exterminated their neighbours.

To be honest… not all of the local Germans were bad and nazi. There is a great story of one of the German pastors who didn’t want to collaborate with their nazi compatriots, and who claimed “I am German, but here is Poland”. The most known tragic story concern family of one of the factory owners and founders of the town - Scheibler. They originally came from Saxony in Germany, but after more than 100 years family became local, and Polish. As many Poles with German origins, they were fighting in Polish army trying to defend their homeland. One of them was sent to the concentration camp.
Situation changed completely after so called “liberation” - taking the town by Russian Red Army. Germans were fleeing in panic. Many of them, decent people were forced to leave everything and to run for their lives. Poles took the bloody revenge over them. Remaining Germans were hunted and killed, sometimes they were saved by some Poles who, after 5 years of genocide, still saw humans in their former lords.

In a couple of days the 2nd nation of the town vanished completely. The era of Russian occupation and terror has started. Officially Poland was a free state, but Russian army was occupying the land, Russian communists were ruling Poland.

After the war Łódź was a town without elite. Jewish elite was killed by Germans. Polish elite was killed by Germans and Russians (or at least sent to the gulags). Germans fled or were killed by Poles and Russians. In the town survived only Polish working class. Private property was forbidden and everything - especially great textile factories became a property of so called “people”.

For next 40 years Łódź as a industrial town was in a kind o MATRIX - a virtual reality of communistic economical system. There were no challenge, no sensible planing, estimating aims, targets of production. Most of the production were sent to Russia. Communistic system wasn’t profitable, and was donated by the state. That kind of reality lasted 40 years, and crushed when all of the sources of funding dried. For more than 50 years Łódź was avoided by any development according to the communist principle and idea of working class town, that can’t be rich, and nice looking. For over 50 years buildings were falling into ruin.

Pomorska Street, City Centre… see the surface of the road.

Nowomiejska Street, former part of Piotrkowska, and part of the old road to Piotrków. Strictly city centre

In 1989 we became free, and in one or two years, Matrix collapsed. The factories lost all of their markets, and were shut down. Instantly couple of hundred thousand workers (mostly women - seamstresses) lost their jobs.

Since early 90ties of 20th century Łódź has been getting worse and worse, despite of some attempts of changes. City, that was forced to stay in one place for over 40 years, despite of the changing world economics, was like a sinking ship.

Streets aren’t efficient and too narrow comparing to the modern traffic. Traffic jams are common.

Today… workers in factories like Indesit, Gilette, Procter and Gamble earning about 400 euro/month. My wife is working as a secretary, human resources in a broker house, earning monthly from 250 to 400 Euro. There is dozens of thousands of people who earn about 150 - 180 euro / month. Our job centres can offer job with that salaries, or… something which is a modern slavery. Temporary work - training like - for 100 euro /month. Poland as a state is a monster of taxation, so having own business in Łódź is really hard, especially facing ruling corruption. Population is decreasing, and every plane heading Dublin or Shannon is full of passengers.

Today our city authorities are proud of Piotrkowska street (main street), but when you turn to the street across, you will see dirty tenements falling into ruins, with poor people living in. Today our city authorities are proud of decreasing unemployment rate, but there is no point to be proud of massive emigration to Ireland and UK. In Łódź, ambulance crews were killing patients using medications, and were selling just killed people to the funeral parlours. In Łódź, police made a horrific discovery, in a home of a poor family. They discovered bodies of children kept in the barrels at home. Parents were alcoholics and also very poor.

My home town is dying and making the best of a bad job, or put on a brave face, won’t change it at all.

If you want to see a real life, a dirty poor districts, old gettho, etc. vist Łódź - so called “Promised Land”…

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