Poles, Jews, Football--and a Race from the Synagogue to the Stadium

Stories regularly appear in the newspapers about the “Jewish past” of football clubs like Ajax or Bayern Munich. In Poland, it wasn’t so much a matter of individual clubs as of Jewish players, officials, and activists being woven into the football culture. The scorer of the first Poland international goal, the manager of the first winning Poland international team, and on and on. There were purely Jewish clubs, and there were big clubs with Jewish stars. All of that ended when the Germans invaded, and the story has largely been forgotten.

The late Henryk Vogler, a dear man I sorely miss, grew up in Cracow rooting for two teams. First and foremost, he supported Cracovia in its eternal rivalry with Wisla.

Current Work: Who Recruited Harvard Student Zbigniew Brzezinski for a CIA Operation?

I'm helping Polish journalist Andrzej Lubowski prepare an English version of his 2011 Polish bestseller Zbig, a biography of the former National Security Advisor and indefatigable, unfailingly insightful political commentator.  The answer to the question: Gloria Steinem. 

What's the Name of this City, Anyway?

The choice marked (1) is the name in Polish, just as Copenhagen is København in Danish, Vienna is Wien in German, and Prague is Praha in Czech. We usually don't use these native names when talking about the cities in English unless we're pretentious, or perhaps sinking into inebriated nostalgia over some out-of-town escapade.

The choice marked (2) is what appears in airline schedules. It's neither fish nor fowl: not English, incorrect in Polish, but a useful convention in specialized contexts. 

The choice marked (3) is the English name for the city, in use for centuries* and still regarded as standard in serious works.

The First Days of World War II in Cracow (2009)

To mark the seventieth anniversary of the German invasion and the start of the war, Krakow Post asked me to write a pair of articles. The first part covers the last month before the war, and the second part covers the first hours and days of the war. Don't know of any other overview of these events in English. 

Jewish Memoirists Recall Prewar Cracow (2003)   (Based on memoirs by Henryk Vogler, Natan Gross, Henryk Zvi Zimmermann-Boneh, and Hela Rufeisen-Schuepper - see below) Their culture and their families are gone, but the streets where they strolled and played and almost all of the buildings that sheltered their homes, schools, sports clubs, cafes, and organizations are still standing. We walk those sidewalks and pass through those doorways today.

Skating Abroad - Lenin in Cracow (2004) There used to be a skating rink in the low ground down the hill from the Botanical Gardens, more or less where a seldom-used stadium and some buildings belonging to the Physical Education Academy stand today. Anyone braving the frosty air during a cold snap in the winter of 1912-1913 might have noted a solitary skater among the giggling crowd, a short, stocky man with narrow eyes who performed elaborate figures in a way that his own wife described as "showing off."

Cracow under German Occupation, 1939-1945 (originally published in 2003)

In 1939, France and Britain were committed by treaty to come to the defense of Poland. Poles took it for granted that their allies would hit Hitler hard, and promptly. They expected a short war. Once Britain and France attacked in the West, Germany would have to withdraw from the East. Rather than staying in Warsaw to be captured, the Polish government, along with many soldiers and pilots, evacuated over the Carpathian mountains and made their way to France, ready to carry on the fight. Even with German troops marching through their streets, Poles thought of themselves as still part of the great anti-Hitler coalition that would soon sweep away the German dictator. The lightning German conquest could be seen as a tactical setback in a war that, by the logic of the times, the Allies should soon win.

In Poland, the only country whose armed forces fought the Nazis from the first to the last day of the war, people did not know that they had been thrust into a new phase of history where the occupation would be far worse than the war.

Roman Polanski's Cracow (2003)

This 1984 biography covers the first two-thirds of a career that has had its ups and downs and been overshadowed by personal tragedy and scandal. Polanski was born in Paris in 1933, but spent his formative years in Cracow. He faced mortal danger during the Second World War and more brushes with death afterwards. 


His father was a plastics manufacturer in a small way, and the boy had a comfortable early childhood in a city where many relatives lived. He showed tremendous imaginative powers.

Nostalgia for Galicia (2003)

You don't have to walk far in Cracow to find a restaurant, pharmacy, bookstore, bar, or antique shop called "Galicia." This nostalgia, though commercially attractive, might seem ironic, since the Austrian province of Galicia formed part of the system under which the surrounding Great Powers occupied Poland from the late eighteenth century until the First World War. Furthermore, Galicia was the poorest and most backward Austrian province. "Galician poverty" was a byword.