Poland - Eastern Europe - page 409

of Poland? If your taste buds need awakening after all of those pierogies, bite into one
of those little red peppers that accompany every dish. The Hungarian “potato pancake”
is a great and filling mix of pork goulash, sour cream, and snips of red pepper wrapped
up in a fresh-baked potato pancake. The service is friendly, and the atmosphere some-
where between homey and intimate.
Traugutta 4. & 042/632-45-46. Lunch and dinner items 18 zl-30 zl ($6-$10/£3.30-£5.50). No credit cards. Daily
noon-10pm.
LÓD4
To get your bearings, start out at one end of Piotrkowska (it doesn't matter which) and
walk from end to end. This is where it all happens in L ód 3 . Feel free to meander down
the various side streets. You'll find houses and buildings in all states of repair and dis-
repair. It's an urban-rehabbers dream, and someday this all might be trendy shops and
boutiques. In addition to the numerous pubs, restaurants, and coffee bars, Pio-
trkowska is lined up and down with turn-of-the-last-century neo -this, neo -that archi-
tectural gems. The house at no. 78 marks the birthplace of renowned pianist Artur
Rubinstein, the city's most famous local son.
The former textile mills, now the Manufaktura shopping mall, as well as the His-
tory of L ód 3 museum and the former Jewish ghetto all lie to the north of the city cen-
ter, beyond the terminus of Piotrkowska at the Plac Wolno 1 ci, easily identified by the
statue of Polish national hero Tadeusz Ko 1 ciuszko at the center.
The Lód3 Ghetto (Litzmannstadt) If one of your reasons for visiting Poland
is to trace Jewish heritage, then you'll certainly want to explore what remains of the
L ód 3 ghetto (known by its German name of Litzmannstadt), once the second-biggest
urban concentration of Jews in Europe after the Warsaw ghetto. But be forewarned,
not much of the former ghetto survived World War II and the area has been rebuilt
with mostly prefab Communist housing blocks and shops. Much of a walking tour of
the ghetto consists of weaving through drab and depressed streets, looking for hard-
to-find memorial plaques and trying to imagine what life must have been like during
what was a much different era.
The Litzmannstadt ghetto is one of the saddest and least-well-known stories of the
war. The Germans first formed the ghetto in 1940, after invading Poland and incor-
porating the L ód 3 area into the German Reich. In all some 230,000 Jews from L ód 3
and around Europe were eventually moved here to live in cramped, appalling condi-
tions. Next to the Jewish ghetto, the Nazis formed a second camp for several thousand
Gypsies (Roma) brought here from Austria's Burgenland province. High walls and a
system of heavily guarded steps and pathways allowed the detainees to move between
various parts of the ghetto, but prevented anyone from entering or leaving. For a time,
the ghetto functioned as a quasi-normal city, with the Jews more or less allowed to
administer their own affairs in exchange for forced labor that contributed to the Nazi
war effort. In 1944, with the approach of the end of the war, the Nazis stepped up
their extermination campaign and began regular large-scale transports to death camps
at Che l mno and Auschwitz. Some 200,000 Jews were eventually killed.
Begin the tour by picking up a copy of the brochure Jewish Landmarks in L ód 3 ,
available at the tourist information office on Piotrkowska. The walk starts north of the
city center at the Ba l ucki Rynek, once the city's main market and the site of the Ger-
man administration of the ghetto. You can find it by walking north along Piotrkowski,
crossing the Plac Wolno 1 ci, and continuing on through the park. From here the trail