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

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

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

“We are saying solely eighty p.c,” 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 p.c 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 p.c 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 have been artfully reconstructed, usually based on the unique plans. 

Breslau’s destruction, it ought to be stated, was in no way inevitable. It hinged fully on Hitler’s choice, in late 1944, to designate the town as “Festung Breslau,” Germany’s ultimate fortress, which was to be defended in any respect prices in opposition to 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 avenue 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 usually questioned what he will need to have product of the upheavals that continued roiling the area even after the struggle. In July 1945, at Joseph Stalin’s behest, the town was reworked from German to Polish in a single day, and ethnic Poles in Lwów, which is now the Ukrainian metropolis of L’viv, had been pushed from their properties and transplanted to the town rechristened as Wrocław. The greater than 600,000 Germans who had been dwelling in what had been Breslau had 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., exterior the cantaloupe-colored Outdated Inventory Trade palazzo — one of many few remaining authentic edifices — the place, a century in the past, his father dealt in grain commodities. Right now it looms behind an out of doors flower market that’s open 24 hours a day. 

My first night time on the town, I sat on a bench exterior 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 in some way harmonious layering of previous and current that surrounded me. As soon as an necessary 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 in the present day. Cross the Oder right here — Wrocław, the so-called “Polish Venice,” boasts greater than 100 bridges — and also you’re in Prague; cross by this gate and you’re in Vienna. Down this avenue, the towering red-brick publish workplace recollects 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 vogue, 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 in opposition to oppression in neighboring Belarus. 

I spent the subsequent 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 latest Polish artwork, and to Hydropolis, a “water data middle” with instructional displays. The remainder of the time I spent having fun with nearly uniformly elegant 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 affords 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 definitely can’t neglect to say the sunflower pâté and flaky cod at Restauracja Tarasowa, a local-ingredients-​solely restaurant on the middle of Wrocław’s Centennial Corridor complicated, which features a large multimedia fountain that in summer season hosts wild water-and-light reveals. 

On my final night time in Wrocław, I wandered down an alley crammed with galleries and artists’ studios to Ruska 46’s Neon Aspect Gallery, a cul-de-sac festooned with salvaged neon indicators from defunct film theaters, lodges, and industrial vegetation, which additionally (after all) has a pleasant bar, Recepcja. Afterward, I took an extended stroll again towards the river, passing dozens of the kitschy bronze gnomes — the town has 600 and counting — that commemorate the Orange Various, 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 house to the town’s greatest new luxurious lodge, the Bridge Wrocław, which affords stunning river views and (prepare for it) top-quality meals. The Artwork Resort, a standby within the previous metropolis, is in a transformed tenement, elements of which have survived because the 14th century. Throughout the road is the medieval meat market, which, like a lot of Wrocław in the present day, 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 high of what got here earlier than. Generally there’s continuity, typically rupture. However in Wrocław, a tough previous has lastly given strategy to a spot that feels totally of the longer term.  

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