[Leica] IMG: Kielce

[Nathan Wajsman]

Kielce is a city of about 200,000 inhabitants in eastern Poland, about 130 km north-east of Kraków. I spent a couple of days there this week because I was participating in a conference on IP rights, organised by the former head of the Polish Patent Office, now a professor at the Technical University of Kielce. I arrived there Sunday mid-day and departed Tuesday afternoon. Most of the pictures were taken during a walkabout in the town on Sunday afternoon.

Kielce is a rather nondescript place. It is much smaller than the other Polish cities I usually visit—Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław—and this was my first ever visit there. The town is known, or notorious, for a terrible event in 1946, a pogrom of about 40 Jews who survived the Holocaust and came back to reclaim their homes in Kielce, only to be met with deadly hostility. This episode is a black spot on the history of Kielce and indeed of Poland. But still, the man who picked me up at Kraków airport, drove me the 130 km to the hotel in Kielce, and spent his entire Sunday afternoon showing me around was not even born when these terrible happenings took place, and yet he was clearly ashamed on behalf of his town. I did not sense the kind of civic pride that one might expect from someone who was born in and has lived his whole life in the same town.

So here is a gallery showing Kielce as I saw it. Not pretty, but not horrible either. And the past is being acknowledged. As I sometimes say, this part of Europe has too much history.

https://www.greatpix.eu/Travel/Kielce/ <https://www.greatpix.eu/Travel/Kielce/>

As always, comments and critique are welcome and appreciated.

Nathan

Nathan Wajsman
photo at frozenlight.eu

http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws
http://www.greatpix.eu
http://www.frozenlight.eu

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