Skip Italy and France on your next European family vacation—and go to Poland instead. Paris, Rome, and Venice don’t want you there anyway and their sights, while beautiful and romantic, are overcrowded and—if we’re being honest—pretty boring for most kids. Besides, there’s less to see at the Louvre than there used to be.
Seriously, Poland should be at the top of your European bucket list. There you will find living, breathing history that occurred within the lifetime of many living Americans, including all of Gen X. You will be able to show your kids the horrors of communism and Naziism in three dimensions and full Technicolor. You will encounter locals and tour guides who lived under communism and hated it. You will hear about the brave men and women of Poland who fought to preserve their culture and heritage while being divided up like so much pie by Hitler and Stalin. And you will get to do so in one of the safest and most America-friendly countries in Europe.
The chance to take in the modern remnants of communism is perhaps the most vital reason to go to Poland. Many of the locals remember life under communism and are happy to tell you about how much they hated it. There is very little nostalgia. There are also many vestiges of life behind the Iron Curtain that are fascinating to visit. Take Nowa Huta, the communist planned community in Krakow that once housed workers for the largest steel refinery in Poland.
Nowa Huta was only three planned “communist paradise” communities outside of Russia. As Rick Steves puts it in his guidebook, “the Soviets felt that smart and sassy Krakow needed a taste of heavy industry.” Nowa Huta was the result. People still live there today, but that just makes the experience even more vibrant. If you find the right tour guide, they’ll even ply you with vodka as they drive you around Nowa Huta in an old Soviet Lada. Very authentic.
Old Warsaw was burned to the ground by Hitler when the Nazis fled the city. But the Poles, plucky as ever, rebuilt their capitol. Today, Warsaw is lovely and modern. Women can walk alone at night and feel safe, unlike in most large cities. But vestiges of communism—which arrived as Warsaw was being rebuilt—are everywhere.
Warsaw’s skyline is still dominated by the Palace of Science and Culture, colloquially known to locals as “Stalin’s penis,” due to its aggressively Soviet—and phallic—architecture. You can take an elevator up to the viewing deck, but make sure you take a moment to absorb the sheer weight and oppressiveness of its architecture. Next, head down the street to the PRL Museum, which serves as a time capsule of life under communism, complete with examples of old communist apartment interiors, a café, and assorted artifacts and propaganda posters.
And don’t miss the Polish Uprising Museum, which captures the history of Varsovians’ desperate (and ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to liberate Warsaw from the Nazis before the Soviets could take it over.
Finally—and perhaps obviously—an hour outside of Krakow lie the remains of the Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps. A visit is difficult, yet essential for bringing the horrors of the Holocaust to life. Yes, both places are overcrowded and the tour moves too briskly; however, nothing can prepare you for the searing experience of walking through an actual gas chamber where so many Jews were murdered for the crime of simply being Jewish.
Then visit the adjacent Birkenau camp, where the mass murder of the Jews (and other groups) was industrialized on a grand and horrible scale. The ruins of the gas chambers and crematoriums still smell of ash. Tellingly, the Nazis tried to destroy them as the camp was being liberated. Today, they sit where they fell in the open air—not 20 feet from where you stand on your visit.
This is recent, profound history and it impacts visitors in a way that the canals of Venice or the Eiffel Tower simply do not.
Is this a good way to spend a family vacation, viewing the remnants of so much evil? It is if you want to make the horrors of communism and Naziism tangible for your kids, a task that is as important as ever today. Auschwitz and Birkenau excepted, Poland is also a lot of fun: the old underground communist bunkers at Nowa Huta (which still have their original equipment); the crusty communist apartments at the PRL Museum; and the over-the-top Soviet architecture of the Palace of Science and Culture all carry a whiff of the ridiculous and absurd. Kids inherently understand this. In addition to making communism seem evil, you also come away thinking it was “pretty cringe” (as my daughter put it). Power hates to be mocked more than almost anything, and it is hard to take communism seriously as an ideology after seeing how it played out in the real world in Poland.
Finally, you should visit Poland because it isn’t just filled with atrocities and absurdities. It is a living, breathing country full of Europeans who actually like America, hate communism and socialism, and take great pride in the place where they live. This alone is incredibly refreshing compared to the cynicism and self-loathing of much of Western Europe. And the old parts of Poland—Krakow was largely spared in World War II—are as traditionally beautiful as any city center in France or Italy.
Family vacations should be fun. But they should also make the world more tangible and interesting for your kids. Communism and anti-Semitism continue to capture the imaginations of a too-large contingent of America’s youth. Rather than explaining to your kids why those ideologies are evil, take the chance to show them instead. No place offers a better opportunity to that than Poland.
