This morning the car ahead of me rapidly slowed way down, so I followed suit. There were four cows on the left side of the road, and while no zebra stripe crossing is visible, the cows obviously intended to cross. The guy ahead of me slowly went ahead and the first cow proceeded across the road. The cars all stopped. The first cow having crossed, the others followed, one by one. Now understand there is no milkmaid around, no farm dog herding the cows, just cows.

In 2018, when I was last here, this had been the recent target of right-wing arsonists, and I am glad to see it restored.

„The killers were Nazis and their collaborators“: and their collaborators is language used at VABAMU as well, and is quite unusual in my experience. All over Poland it used to be „the Nazis“ who killed Jews and Poles, until the PiS era and today in Poland it’s always „the Germans“, very rarely „Nazis“. In France and the Netherlands the criminals were the Nazis, except in historical photographs when it is almost always the French and Dutch police involved in rounding up Jews.

I think it is common for children to imagine their adult future selves as heroes – this seems natural. The reality of how difficult, how dangerous it may be personally to avoid murderous collaboration with the state, indeed how difficult it may be to even recognize that one is collaborating, or to have the courage to recognize that one has a choice, was not something my peers were much exposed to.