Nowa Huta (July 24th)

Today, we participated in a communism tour of Nowa Huta, a district of Krakow built as a gift to the Polish people by the Soviets. We learned of the lifestyle of those is communist Poland, rode in a Trabant 601, which is a car built in Communist times, and climbed on a Second World War-era tank. The group learned about the communist ideal of equality, but as George Orwell says in Animal Farm, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” This is an interesting concept for us to try to wrap our minds around. Many of us were very surprised by this concept of a non-existent equality being forced on people. Soon, a philosophical debate erupted, begging the question: What is equality? There are many different answers to this question, but many of us came to the conclusion that equality among humans is impossible, as it is just not in human nature. One person will always see themselves as better than others. The best we can do is try to stop injustices like the Holocaust, which we have studied for the past two months, from happening again.

On a very different note, we also saw the first church built in this communist neighbourhood. Poland, at the time, was a densely populated Catholic country, with over 90% of its population identifying as Roman Catholic. The switch between this more religious life and the communist, “godless” life was very difficult for many people, so they fought to be able to build their own church. We all could admire their endurance for this cause as many limits were put on them. The construction of this church took about ten years. Everyone could admire the unusual beauty of this church, so many of us were inspired to fight harder for causes we believe in. I was inspired to join more clubs and councils at my school to fight for rights for everybody. For me, and probably many others, this limit on the right to freely practice religion in this part of Krakow seemed very wrong. Communism is all about this ideal of “equality,” but is taking away everything from a person’s identity really equality?

                    -Phoebe M

This picture is of the Trabant 601 that we rode in as well as the bus. It is also from the communist time.

This is the bus we took around Nowa Huta. It is a bus from the time when Poland was under communist rule.

We had the opportunity to climb on a Second World War era tank, which many students found "extremely cool."

This was the inside of our bus during the tour.

This is an image of the church that was built by the people of Krakow fought to build while Poland was a communist country.