{"meta":{"auto_published_comments":"","comment_moderation_keys":"","comment_notifications":"","current_migration":"220","custom_preview_length":"2","dashboard_page":"panel","date_format":"jS M, Y","description":"Folio and journal documenting photographic projects, research, and process, with critical perspectives on contemporary visual culture.","home_page":"5","last_update_check":"2026-02-23 17:53:42","posts_page":"7","posts_per_page":"5","show_all_posts":"","sitename":"Adam Kingston. Photographer &amp; researcher","theme":"antonis","update_version":"0.12.7"},"posts":[{"data":{"id":"20","title":"One Year on Ilkley Moor","slug":"one-year-on-ilkley-moor","description":"Beginning in 2024, the Moors for the Future Partnership, in conjunction with Bradford Council, Rebel Restoration and Friends of Ilkley Moor (FoIM), has undertaken restoration work on Ilkley Moor to restore peatland and improve flood and wildfire resilience. This work has involved the installation of hundreds of stone, timber, coir and heather dams to stem the flow of water from the moorland. The p\u2026","markdown":"Beginning in 2024, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.moorsforthefuture.org.uk\/our-work\/our-projects\/ilkley-moor-resilience\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Moors for the Future Partnership<\/a>, in conjunction with <a href=\"https:\/\/news.bradford.gov.uk\/press-releases\/61544cc5-b8bf-4567-b386-372b99632a26\/final-phase-of-ilkley-moor-restoration-gets-underway\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bradford Council<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rebelrestoration.org\/projects\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Restoration<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ilkleymoor.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Friends of Ilkley Moor (FoIM)<\/a>, has undertaken restoration work on Ilkley Moor to restore peatland and improve flood and wildfire resilience.\n\nThis work has involved the installation of hundreds of stone, timber, coir and heather dams to stem the flow of water from the moorland. The planting of 200 trees and 31,000 sphagnum plugs also contributes to natural flood management. Bracken and heather have been cut to diversify moorland vegetation, and 36.2 hectares of Sitka spruce have been cleared.\n\nFour fixed-point photography posts have been installed to enable members of the public to document areas of moorland where restoration and re-wetting work has taken place, creating a visual record of the terrain's gradual transformation within the wider landscape.\n\nI came across these posts while making work for an <a href=\"\/projects\/aubade\">ongoing project<\/a>. I assumed most people would rest their phones on them rather than use a proper camera, often in less than ideal weather or light conditions. Given how much time I spend on the moor, I felt I could contribute higher quality files that more accurately reflect the character of the landscape, rather than the heavily processed, AI or HDR-enhanced images generated by phones.\n\n<div class=\"video w-80\">\n\t<div class=\"embed-container\">\n\t\t<iframe \n\t\t\tsrc=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/m2bg4A533Mk\" \n\t\t\ttitle=\"YouTube video player\" \n\t\t\tframeborder=\"0\" \n\t\t\tallow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" \n\t\t\tallowfullscreen>\n\t\t<\/iframe>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\nAs I made these pictures, I realised that although the posts were shifting slightly in the ground over time, their relatively stable positions would allow me to create timelapse videos over a 12-month period. I set a schedule that accommodated my travels abroad and was lucky that the weather more or less played along.\n\n<div class=\"video w-80\">\n\t<div class=\"embed-container\">\n\t\t<iframe \n\t\t\tsrc=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gG8eSATN4c4\" \n\t\t\ttitle=\"YouTube video player\" \n\t\t\tframeborder=\"0\" \n\t\t\tallow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" \n\t\t\tallowfullscreen>\n\t\t<\/iframe>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\nI'm happy with the end result, though the low winter sun made life difficult at a couple of the fixed points, either due to shadows in the frame (Fixed_Point_Ilkley_2), or because I was forced to shoot directly into the sun (Fixed_Point_Ilkley_3). I worked around this by adjusting the time of day I made pictures from these specific posts.\n\n<div class=\"video\">\n\t<div class=\"embed-container\">\n\t\t<iframe \n\t\t\tsrc=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/c7GAl5fSWYY\" \n\t\t\ttitle=\"YouTube video player\" \n\t\t\tframeborder=\"0\" \n\t\t\tallow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" \n\t\t\tallowfullscreen>\n\t\t<\/iframe>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\nWhile working on the moor, I also became aware that the restoration efforts are not always well understood, with some people I spoke to complaining about 'boggy' or 'muddy' conditions. Even if the restoration work has affected the footpaths \u2013 and I haven't seen evidence that it has \u2013 people might be more receptive if they had a better sense of how the work contributes to water resilience and flood mitigation in the valley, as well as its wider significance with regards rural habitats.\n\n<div class=\"video\">\n\t<div class=\"embed-container\">\n\t\t<iframe \n\t\t\tsrc=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/900uD5TFXm8\" \n\t\t\ttitle=\"YouTube video player\" \n\t\t\tframeborder=\"0\" \n\t\t\tallow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" \n\t\t\tallowfullscreen>\n\t\t<\/iframe>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\nWith this in mind, I plan to exhibit the films with a grid of prints from their constituent frames, alongside related work, in an attempt to articulate both the landscape's slow transformation and the environmental stakes involved.","html":"<p>Beginning in 2024, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.moorsforthefuture.org.uk\/our-work\/our-projects\/ilkley-moor-resilience\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Moors for the Future Partnership<\/a>, in conjunction with <a href=\"https:\/\/news.bradford.gov.uk\/press-releases\/61544cc5-b8bf-4567-b386-372b99632a26\/final-phase-of-ilkley-moor-restoration-gets-underway\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bradford Council<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rebelrestoration.org\/projects\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Restoration<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ilkleymoor.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Friends of Ilkley Moor (FoIM)<\/a>, has undertaken restoration work on Ilkley Moor to restore peatland and improve flood and wildfire resilience.<\/p>\n<p>This work has involved the installation of hundreds of stone, timber, coir and heather dams to stem the flow of water from the moorland. The planting of 200 trees and 31,000 sphagnum plugs also contributes to natural flood management. Bracken and heather have been cut to diversify moorland vegetation, and 36.2 hectares of Sitka spruce have been cleared.<\/p>\n<p>Four fixed-point photography posts have been installed to enable members of the public to document areas of moorland where restoration and re-wetting work has taken place, creating a visual record of the terrain's gradual transformation within the wider landscape.<\/p>\n<p>I came across these posts while making work for an <a href=\"\/projects\/aubade\">ongoing project<\/a>. I assumed most people would rest their phones on them rather than use a proper camera, often in less than ideal weather or light conditions. Given how much time I spend on the moor, I felt I could contribute higher quality files that more accurately reflect the character of the landscape, rather than the heavily processed, AI or HDR-enhanced images generated by phones.<\/p>\n<div class=\"video w-80\">\n    <div class=\"embed-container\">\n        <iframe \n            src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/m2bg4A533Mk\" \n            title=\"YouTube video player\" \n            frameborder=\"0\" \n            allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" \n            allowfullscreen>\n        <\/iframe>\n    <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>As I made these pictures, I realised that although the posts were shifting slightly in the ground over time, their relatively stable positions would allow me to create timelapse videos over a 12-month period. I set a schedule that accommodated my travels abroad and was lucky that the weather more or less played along.<\/p>\n<div class=\"video w-80\">\n    <div class=\"embed-container\">\n        <iframe \n            src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gG8eSATN4c4\" \n            title=\"YouTube video player\" \n            frameborder=\"0\" \n            allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" \n            allowfullscreen>\n        <\/iframe>\n    <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>I'm happy with the end result, though the low winter sun made life difficult at a couple of the fixed points, either due to shadows in the frame (Fixed_Point_Ilkley_2), or because I was forced to shoot directly into the sun (Fixed_Point_Ilkley_3). I worked around this by adjusting the time of day I made pictures from these specific posts.<\/p>\n<div class=\"video\">\n    <div class=\"embed-container\">\n        <iframe \n            src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/c7GAl5fSWYY\" \n            title=\"YouTube video player\" \n            frameborder=\"0\" \n            allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" \n            allowfullscreen>\n        <\/iframe>\n    <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>While working on the moor, I also became aware that the restoration efforts are not always well understood, with some people I spoke to complaining about 'boggy' or 'muddy' conditions. Even if the restoration work has affected the footpaths \u2013 and I haven't seen evidence that it has \u2013 people might be more receptive if they had a better sense of how the work contributes to water resilience and flood mitigation in the valley, as well as its wider significance with regards rural habitats.<\/p>\n<div class=\"video\">\n    <div class=\"embed-container\">\n        <iframe \n            src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/900uD5TFXm8\" \n            title=\"YouTube video player\" \n            frameborder=\"0\" \n            allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" \n            allowfullscreen>\n        <\/iframe>\n    <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>With this in mind, I plan to exhibit the films with a grid of prints from their constituent frames, alongside related work, in an attempt to articulate both the landscape's slow transformation and the environmental stakes involved.<\/p>","css":"","js":"","created":"2026-02-23 12:00:00","updated":"2026-02-23 17:53:54","author":"1","category":"2","status":"published","comments":"0"}},{"data":{"id":"19","title":"Scans of Epson reflective document mats","slug":"scans-of-epson-reflective-document-mats","description":"Over a couple days last summer I made high-resolution scans of 30 reflective document mats attached to the A3 and A4 Epson scanner lids at Leeds Arts University. I believe this accounts for almost all of the scanners at LAU that had mats installed on their lids, across the Mac Suites and various studios throughout the building. On the few occasions a scanner was inoperable, I removed the mat and i\u2026","markdown":"Over a couple days last summer I made high-resolution scans of 30 reflective document mats attached to the A3 and A4 Epson scanner lids at Leeds Arts University. I believe this accounts for almost all of the scanners at LAU that had mats installed on their lids, across the Mac Suites and various studios throughout the building. On the few occasions a scanner was inoperable, I removed the mat and installed it on a different scanner. All scans were made using identical settings; any visible variation in exposure is due to differences in the age of the scanner bulbs and the mats themselves, some of which have noticeably yellowed over time.\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/scanner lids\/Scanner lids - IG reel.png\" alt=\"Screenshot of IG reel\">\n<\/figure>\n\nI also made three 600 PPI scans from the photocopiers in the library, but the quality of these files is lower due to poor focus and the copiers supplying compressed PDF files instead of lossless TIFFs. Shame, because these three lids had some of the more interesting paint\/ink transfers.\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/scanner lids\/A3_600-PPI_02.jpg\" alt=\"A3_600-PPI_02.TIF\">\n\t<figcaption>A3_600-PPI_02.TIF<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nThe motivation was to present some of these scans as a record of accumulated layers of artistic endeavour, with the stains and other marks being read as traces of countless students' work passing through these machines over many years. I never got round to doing anything with them so I'm offering these out as a sort of resource pack of textures that people might find useful. They can be used directly as surface detail, or mined as raw material for building custom textures, overlays, or brush libraries.\n\n<a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/drive\/folders\/10X-9E6629AfXqGtCpJKioQKaQ3V8p0dY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The full collection of 33 files<\/a> amounts to 16 GB, with each mat scanned at the highest possible resolution across the entire area of the scanning bed.","html":"<p>Over a couple days last summer I made high-resolution scans of 30 reflective document mats attached to the A3 and A4 Epson scanner lids at Leeds Arts University. I believe this accounts for almost all of the scanners at LAU that had mats installed on their lids, across the Mac Suites and various studios throughout the building. On the few occasions a scanner was inoperable, I removed the mat and installed it on a different scanner. All scans were made using identical settings; any visible variation in exposure is due to differences in the age of the scanner bulbs and the mats themselves, some of which have noticeably yellowed over time.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/scanner lids\/Scanner lids - IG reel.png\" alt=\"Screenshot of IG reel\">\n<\/figure>\n<p>I also made three 600 PPI scans from the photocopiers in the library, but the quality of these files is lower due to poor focus and the copiers supplying compressed PDF files instead of lossless TIFFs. Shame, because these three lids had some of the more interesting paint\/ink transfers.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/scanner lids\/A3_600-PPI_02.jpg\" alt=\"A3_600-PPI_02.TIF\">\n    <figcaption>A3_600-PPI_02.TIF<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>The motivation was to present some of these scans as a record of accumulated layers of artistic endeavour, with the stains and other marks being read as traces of countless students' work passing through these machines over many years. I never got round to doing anything with them so I'm offering these out as a sort of resource pack of textures that people might find useful. They can be used directly as surface detail, or mined as raw material for building custom textures, overlays, or brush libraries.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/drive\/folders\/10X-9E6629AfXqGtCpJKioQKaQ3V8p0dY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The full collection of 33 files<\/a> amounts to 16 GB, with each mat scanned at the highest possible resolution across the entire area of the scanning bed.<\/p>","css":"","js":"","created":"2026-02-07 13:27:04","updated":"2026-02-07 23:37:52","author":"1","category":"6","status":"published","comments":"0"}},{"data":{"id":"16","title":"The political and communal tensions behind Jewish heritage preservation in Poland","slug":"the-political-and-communal-tensions-behind-jewish-heritage-preservation-in-poland","description":"There's a misconception among those with only a casual interest in Jewish heritage in Poland: that when a property is restored to a Jewish community through the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland, its preservation is thereby assured and it will be developed in a manner befitting its historical and cultural significance. Such views ignore the stark economic realities and tensions inher\u2026","markdown":"There's a misconception among those with only a casual interest in Jewish heritage in Poland: that when a property is restored to a Jewish community through the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.noa-project.eu\/project\/union-of-jewish-religious-communities-in-poland\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland<\/a>, its preservation is thereby assured and it will be developed in a manner befitting its historical and cultural significance.\n\nSuch views ignore the stark economic realities and tensions inherent among the communities and institutions that hold a stake in such projects.\n\nThis is purely anecdotal, but what struck me when speaking to Jews in Wroc\u0142aw and Pozna\u0144 is the sheer heterogeneity of Jewish perspectives in Poland; there seems to be no dominant or cohesive outlook, only a wide spectrum of individual positions. I believe this speaks to the diversity inherent in Jewish communities in Poland, with a mix of secular\/cultural and religiously observant Jews, and a newer cohort of young adults rediscovering their Jewish ancestry. There is also the \"silent generation\" of Jews in Poland\u2014shaped by communist-era pogroms and sustained pressure to assimilate\u2014some of whom in recent years have felt able to re-emerge and contribute to the renewal of Jewish cultural life in the country.\n\nHowever, one consistent thread that I've encountered when speaking with Jews in Poland is an apathy, sometimes bordering on hostility, toward German cultural artifacts, including the German-era synagogues in western regions of the country. Although many of these sites have been legally returned to Jewish communal ownership, the vast majority of Jews in Poland today are of Polish heritage rather than German-Jewish descent, and the cultural or emotional investment in restoring German-period buildings is limited. In some cases, these structures are viewed less as part of a cultural lineage than as remnants of a community that no longer exists and to which today's Polish Jews may feel little attachment.\n\nEconomic reality is an additional and often decisive factor. The <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_Synagogue_(Pozna\u0144)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">New Synagogue in Pozna\u0144<\/a>, for example, is a vast and deteriorating structure that would require substantial financial resources to stabilise and adapt to contemporary use. Even when it was built in the early twentieth century, Pozna\u0144's Jewish community was relatively small, and today it's far smaller still. The scale of the building exceeds the needs or capacities of the present community, which lacks both the demographic base and the institutional funding to undertake such a project. As with many restituted properties across Poland, the gap between symbolic heritage and practical feasibility is acute, and the absence of sustained interest or investment reflects this structural mismatch rather than neglect alone. The synagogue was sold to a private investor in 2016, whose plans to convert it into a hotel were complicated by the building's entry into the register of historical monuments in 2024. It's currently <a href=\"https:\/\/jewish-heritage-europe.eu\/2025\/11\/24\/poland-poznan-sale\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">on the market for PLN 35 million (\u20ac8.2 million)<\/a>.\n\n<figure class=\"w-70\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Pozna\u0144 - New Synagogue.jpg\" alt=\"New Synagogue in Pozna\u0144\">\n\t<figcaption>New Synagogue in Pozna\u0144<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nThere's a similar lack of consensus surrounding the fate of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_Synagogue_(Breslau)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">New Synagogue in Wroc\u0142aw<\/a>. The building was completely destroyed. What remains is a boundary wall and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.timesofisrael.com\/foundations-of-synagogue-destroyed-in-1938-uncovered-in-poland\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">foundations<\/a>, set in an overgrown wasteland between a kindergarten and the Uniformed Services High School on ul. \u0141\u0105kowa. There's talk of the land being sold for residential development, with the Bente Kahan Foundation and members of Wroc\u0142aw's Jewish community continuing to resist.\n\n<div class=\"video w-80\">\n\t<div class=\"embed-container\">\n\t\t<iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/417172262\" frameborder=\"0\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Wroc\u0142aw - New Synagogue.jpg\" alt=\"Site of former New Synagogue in Wroc\u0142aw (Breslau)\">\n\t<figcaption>Site of former New Synagogue in Wroc\u0142aw (Breslau)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Wroc\u0142aw - New Synagogue (3).jpg\" alt=\"New Synagogue in Wroc\u0142aw\">\n<\/figure>\n\nIt could be worse. In Wolsztyn (formerly Wollstein), the synagogue was rebuilt during the post-war period in concrete to approximate the silhouette and scale of the original structure. It's unclear why the building was resurrected in this way, given that it later served as the Tatra cinema (<em>Kino Tatra<\/em>) before being purchased by a meat merchant specialising in pork products\u2014an incongruous use given the cultural and religious context. It eventually became vacant before being gutted by a fire at the end of 2009, with contemporary reports indicating that the fire may have been deliberately set.\n\n<figure class=\"w-70\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Wolsztyn - synagogue.jpg\" alt=\"Former synagogue in Wolsztyn (Wollstein)\">\n\t<figcaption>Former synagogue in Wolsztyn (right of frame with six spires). Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/cja.huji.ac.il\/browser.php?mode=set&id=43242\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Center for Jewish Art<\/a>. \u00a9 Gross Family Collection<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nAcross Poland, however, there are examples of more constructive approaches to Jewish heritage. In cities with surviving pre-war Jewish communities or where stronger institutional frameworks exist\u2014such as Krak\u00f3w, Warsaw, \u0141\u00f3d\u017a, and Tykocin\u2014historic synagogues have been restored or repurposed with considerable care. Some now function as museums or cultural centres, others as active places of worship, and still others as educational spaces dedicated to documenting local Jewish history. These projects, often the result of partnerships between municipal authorities, heritage organisations, and academic institutions, demonstrate that when interest, funding, and consensus align, the preservation of Jewish cultural sites is both possible and meaningful.\n\nWhen I was in G\u0142og\u00f3w recently, I was reassured to see that the foundations of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lbi.org\/griffinger\/record\/209670\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">former synagogue<\/a> there have been reconstructed to mark the site and acknowledge its historical role within the city's pre-war Jewish community. The intervention is modest but nonetheless represents a clear, collective decision to memorialise rather than erase, in a city with effectively no Jewish community to speak of.\n\n<figure class=\"w-80\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/G\u0142og\u00f3w - synagogue.jpg\" alt=\"G\u0142og\u00f3w synagogue\">\n\t<figcaption>G\u0142og\u00f3w synagogue monument and memorial<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/G\u0142og\u00f3w - synagogue (4).jpg\" alt=\"G\u0142og\u00f3w synagogue\">\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/G\u0142og\u00f3w - synagogue (5).jpg\" alt=\"G\u0142og\u00f3w synagogue\">\n<\/figure>\n\nI've seen this in the UK, in Bradford, where local Muslim community groups helped <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2013\/dec\/20\/bradford-synagogue-saved-muslims-jews\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">save the synagogue on Bowland Street<\/a>, the local Jewish congregation having all but disappeared by the late twentieth century.\n\nThe <a href=\"https:\/\/cja.huji.ac.il\/synagogue-home\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Historic Synagogues of Europe<\/a> project, supported by the Foundation for Jewish Heritage and the Center for Jewish Art, provides a comprehensive record of historic synagogues across Europe.","html":"<p>There's a misconception among those with only a casual interest in Jewish heritage in Poland: that when a property is restored to a Jewish community through the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.noa-project.eu\/project\/union-of-jewish-religious-communities-in-poland\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland<\/a>, its preservation is thereby assured and it will be developed in a manner befitting its historical and cultural significance.<\/p>\n<p>Such views ignore the stark economic realities and tensions inherent among the communities and institutions that hold a stake in such projects.<\/p>\n<p>This is purely anecdotal, but what struck me when speaking to Jews in Wroc\u0142aw and Pozna\u0144 is the sheer heterogeneity of Jewish perspectives in Poland; there seems to be no dominant or cohesive outlook, only a wide spectrum of individual positions. I believe this speaks to the diversity inherent in Jewish communities in Poland, with a mix of secular\/cultural and religiously observant Jews, and a newer cohort of young adults rediscovering their Jewish ancestry. There is also the &quot;silent generation&quot; of Jews in Poland\u2014shaped by communist-era pogroms and sustained pressure to assimilate\u2014some of whom in recent years have felt able to re-emerge and contribute to the renewal of Jewish cultural life in the country.<\/p>\n<p>However, one consistent thread that I've encountered when speaking with Jews in Poland is an apathy, sometimes bordering on hostility, toward German cultural artifacts, including the German-era synagogues in western regions of the country. Although many of these sites have been legally returned to Jewish communal ownership, the vast majority of Jews in Poland today are of Polish heritage rather than German-Jewish descent, and the cultural or emotional investment in restoring German-period buildings is limited. In some cases, these structures are viewed less as part of a cultural lineage than as remnants of a community that no longer exists and to which today's Polish Jews may feel little attachment.<\/p>\n<p>Economic reality is an additional and often decisive factor. The <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_Synagogue_(Pozna\u0144)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">New Synagogue in Pozna\u0144<\/a>, for example, is a vast and deteriorating structure that would require substantial financial resources to stabilise and adapt to contemporary use. Even when it was built in the early twentieth century, Pozna\u0144's Jewish community was relatively small, and today it's far smaller still. The scale of the building exceeds the needs or capacities of the present community, which lacks both the demographic base and the institutional funding to undertake such a project. As with many restituted properties across Poland, the gap between symbolic heritage and practical feasibility is acute, and the absence of sustained interest or investment reflects this structural mismatch rather than neglect alone. The synagogue was sold to a private investor in 2016, whose plans to convert it into a hotel were complicated by the building's entry into the register of historical monuments in 2024. It's currently <a href=\"https:\/\/jewish-heritage-europe.eu\/2025\/11\/24\/poland-poznan-sale\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">on the market for PLN 35 million (\u20ac8.2 million)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"w-70\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Pozna\u0144 - New Synagogue.jpg\" alt=\"New Synagogue in Pozna\u0144\">\n    <figcaption>New Synagogue in Pozna\u0144<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>There's a similar lack of consensus surrounding the fate of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_Synagogue_(Breslau)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">New Synagogue in Wroc\u0142aw<\/a>. The building was completely destroyed. What remains is a boundary wall and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.timesofisrael.com\/foundations-of-synagogue-destroyed-in-1938-uncovered-in-poland\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">foundations<\/a>, set in an overgrown wasteland between a kindergarten and the Uniformed Services High School on ul. \u0141\u0105kowa. There's talk of the land being sold for residential development, with the Bente Kahan Foundation and members of Wroc\u0142aw's Jewish community continuing to resist.<\/p>\n<div class=\"video w-80\">\n    <div class=\"embed-container\">\n        <iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/417172262\" frameborder=\"0\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n    <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Wroc\u0142aw - New Synagogue.jpg\" alt=\"Site of former New Synagogue in Wroc\u0142aw (Breslau)\">\n    <figcaption>Site of former New Synagogue in Wroc\u0142aw (Breslau)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Wroc\u0142aw - New Synagogue (3).jpg\" alt=\"New Synagogue in Wroc\u0142aw\">\n<\/figure>\n<p>It could be worse. In Wolsztyn (formerly Wollstein), the synagogue was rebuilt during the post-war period in concrete to approximate the silhouette and scale of the original structure. It's unclear why the building was resurrected in this way, given that it later served as the Tatra cinema (<em>Kino Tatra<\/em>) before being purchased by a meat merchant specialising in pork products\u2014an incongruous use given the cultural and religious context. It eventually became vacant before being gutted by a fire at the end of 2009, with contemporary reports indicating that the fire may have been deliberately set.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"w-70\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Wolsztyn - synagogue.jpg\" alt=\"Former synagogue in Wolsztyn (Wollstein)\">\n    <figcaption>Former synagogue in Wolsztyn (right of frame with six spires). Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/cja.huji.ac.il\/browser.php?mode=set&id=43242\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Center for Jewish Art<\/a>. \u00a9 Gross Family Collection<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Across Poland, however, there are examples of more constructive approaches to Jewish heritage. In cities with surviving pre-war Jewish communities or where stronger institutional frameworks exist\u2014such as Krak\u00f3w, Warsaw, \u0141\u00f3d\u017a, and Tykocin\u2014historic synagogues have been restored or repurposed with considerable care. Some now function as museums or cultural centres, others as active places of worship, and still others as educational spaces dedicated to documenting local Jewish history. These projects, often the result of partnerships between municipal authorities, heritage organisations, and academic institutions, demonstrate that when interest, funding, and consensus align, the preservation of Jewish cultural sites is both possible and meaningful.<\/p>\n<p>When I was in G\u0142og\u00f3w recently, I was reassured to see that the foundations of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lbi.org\/griffinger\/record\/209670\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">former synagogue<\/a> there have been reconstructed to mark the site and acknowledge its historical role within the city's pre-war Jewish community. The intervention is modest but nonetheless represents a clear, collective decision to memorialise rather than erase, in a city with effectively no Jewish community to speak of.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"w-80\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/G\u0142og\u00f3w - synagogue.jpg\" alt=\"G\u0142og\u00f3w synagogue\">\n    <figcaption>G\u0142og\u00f3w synagogue monument and memorial<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/G\u0142og\u00f3w - synagogue (4).jpg\" alt=\"G\u0142og\u00f3w synagogue\">\n<\/figure>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/G\u0142og\u00f3w - synagogue (5).jpg\" alt=\"G\u0142og\u00f3w synagogue\">\n<\/figure>\n<p>I've seen this in the UK, in Bradford, where local Muslim community groups helped <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2013\/dec\/20\/bradford-synagogue-saved-muslims-jews\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">save the synagogue on Bowland Street<\/a>, the local Jewish congregation having all but disappeared by the late twentieth century.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/cja.huji.ac.il\/synagogue-home\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Historic Synagogues of Europe<\/a> project, supported by the Foundation for Jewish Heritage and the Center for Jewish Art, provides a comprehensive record of historic synagogues across Europe.<\/p>","css":"","js":"","created":"2026-01-12 10:39:23","updated":"2026-01-12 15:35:21","author":"1","category":"5","status":"published","comments":"0"}},{"data":{"id":"17","title":"Clara","slug":"clara","description":"I learned today that my great-grandmother Else's elderly mother, Clara Hirschel (n\u00e9e Goldstein), was interned alongside her daughter and son-in-law at the transit camp I visited in Rybna (formerly Reibnig). Clara was a member of the prominent Goldstein family, several of whom moved from Kattowitz to Breslau in the mid-19th century. I'd previously found her husband's name on the Goldstein family to\u2026","markdown":"I learned today that my great-grandmother Else's elderly mother, Clara Hirschel (n\u00e9e Goldstein), was interned alongside her daughter and son-in-law at the <a href=\"\/text\/the-transit-camp-for-jews-at-riebnig\">transit camp I visited in Rybna<\/a> (formerly Reibnig).\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - transit camp.jpg\" alt=\"Rybna (Riebnig) transit camp\">\n\t<figcaption>Transit camp in Rybna, Opole Voivodeship, Poland<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nClara was a member of the prominent Goldstein family, several of whom moved from Kattowitz to Breslau in the mid-19th century. I'd previously found her husband's name on the Goldstein family tomb, in the Old Jewish Cemetery on ul. \u015al\u0119\u017cna, Wroc\u0142aw. Ludwig died in 1933, during the early phase of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ushmm.org\/m\/pdfs\/Publication_OP_2003-01.pdf\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Enteignung<\/em><\/a><i class=\"far fa-file-pdf\"><\/i>, leaving his family to face an increasingly hostile future.\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Wroc\u0142aw - Goldstein-Hirschel tomb.jpg\" alt=\"Ludwig Hirschel's name on Goldstein family tomb\">\n\t<figcaption>Ludwig Hirschel (3 May 1860 \u2013 15 December 1933)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nClara was reunited with Georg and Else in Riebnig in May 1942, around six months after her daughter and son-in-law had been interned there. She didn't stay long, however, as the Nazi authorities would have considered a 69-year-old woman unsuited to carrying out forced labour in the woodland surrounding the camp.\n\nOnce selected for deportation on 24 August, she was forced to walk the six kilometres to Poppelau (Popiel\u00f3w) train station with 217 others, arriving in Breslau the following day. If she had sufficient funds in her bank account she would have signed a contract for the purchase of an 'apartment' in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theholocaustexplained.org\/the-camps\/theresienstadt-a-case-study\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Theresienstadt ghetto<\/a>, which by 1942 was mainly used to house prominent and elderly Jews. The so-called <em>Heimeinkaufsvertrag<\/em> (home buying contract) was simply another form of spoliation of Jewish property: on Clara's arrival at Theresienstadt she would have been processed at the \"sluice gate\", staying in unheated barracks for several days, before being assigned to an overcrowded, unsanitary house emptied of its furniture by the previous owner.\n\n<figure class=\"w-80\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Theresienstadt - rooftops.jpg\" alt=\"Theresienstadt ghetto rooftops\">\n\t<figcaption>Theresienstadt ghetto from above. Attribution: artist unknown, \u00a9 Jewish Council of Jewish Communities Prague<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nBy 1942, a quarter of new arrivals at Theresienstadt died within six weeks, due to the scarcity of food, prevalence of disease, and poor medical conditions in the ghetto. The self-administration adopted a strategy to save as many children and young people as possible, to allow them to emigrate to Palestine after the war, which severely disadvantaged the elderly. Almost all elderly prisoners who were not deported from Theresienstadt died there, making it inconceivable that Clara would survive the camp.\n\n<figure class=\"w-80\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Theresienstadt - In the Living Quarters.jpg\" alt=\"In the Living Quarters - Bed\u0159ich Fritta\">\n\t<figcaption>Conditions in Theresienstadt. Attribution: <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:In_the_Living_Quarters.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bed\u0159ich Fritta<\/a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nHowever, Clara didn't die at Theresienstadt, managing somehow to survive for over a month. On 27 September 1942 she was selected for transportation to \"another ghetto\" by the self-administration, before being marched three kilometres to Bauschowitz train station. The average age of deportees on this transport was 72, with those who died on the march to the train station loaded onto train cars nonetheless, in order to maintain quotas. The train left Bauschowitz on 29 September, headed to the notorious <a href=\"https:\/\/muzeumtreblinka.eu\/en\/informacje\/treblinka-ii\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">extermination camp at Treblinka<\/a>, where it arrived a couple of days later via Dresden, Breslau, Posen and Warsaw. Of the 2000 Jews on board this transport, not a single person is known to have survived.\n\nI don't know whether Clara died en route to Treblinka or at the camp itself, and I don't know if she would have been aware that she was passing through her hometown of Breslau on the way. These cruel 'homecomings' seem to be a feature of the drawn-out torture and murder of my family, and I often wonder if at that point they might have retained any hope of survival. I think it's unlikely, given that rumours of deportations to extermination camps were supposed to have been rife around the camp at Riebnig as early as 1941. I also wonder what Else knew of her mother's fate after their separation in August. It seems unlikely there was any means for Clara to have contacted her, especially given the accelerated timescale of her deportation from Theresienstadt to Treblinka. When Clara was selected for deportation in August, Else must have known she would never see her mother again, having perhaps experienced some relief only a few months prior when she joined the family in Riebnig.\n\n<figure class=\"w-70\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Treblinka - memorial (2).jpg\" alt=\"Memorial at Treblinka II extermination camp\">\n\t<figcaption>Memorial at Treblinka II. Attribution: Fotokon<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nPrisoners incapable of labour were gassed almost immediately on arrival at Treblinka, sometimes having been tortured beforehand. I don't want to detail that here. Long before I began this research, I set limits on what I exposed myself to, deliberately stepping back from some material. Nothing in the historical record in relation to the Shoah could reasonably be described as gratuitous, but I find that unless I draw boundaries somewhere I'm less capable of absorbing what must be understood. I barely spoke for a day after reading <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jewishbookcouncil.org\/book\/fear-anti-semitism-in-poland-after-auschwitz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jan Gross's <em>Fear<\/em><\/a>. Engaging with that research wasn't just an intellectual exercise but something that reverberated inward\u2014the intensity of it and the scale of what it described were completely overwhelming. It probably doesn't help that the sense of distance that might otherwise exist is collapsed by the knowledge that this is my family's history, and it's inevitable that this proximity intensifies my response.\n\nI've long described myself as a philosophical pessimist, and I genuinely have no idea how anyone can encounter this material\u2014the absolute horror of it, alongside the knowledge that people continue to treat one another in this way\u2014and emerge with anything other than the darkest possible view of humanity.\n\nClara Olga Hirschel (n\u00e9e Goldstein), 1873\u20131942.\n","html":"<p>I learned today that my great-grandmother Else's elderly mother, Clara Hirschel (n\u00e9e Goldstein), was interned alongside her daughter and son-in-law at the <a href=\"\/text\/the-transit-camp-for-jews-at-riebnig\">transit camp I visited in Rybna<\/a> (formerly Reibnig).<\/p>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - transit camp.jpg\" alt=\"Rybna (Riebnig) transit camp\">\n    <figcaption>Transit camp in Rybna, Opole Voivodeship, Poland<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Clara was a member of the prominent Goldstein family, several of whom moved from Kattowitz to Breslau in the mid-19th century. I'd previously found her husband's name on the Goldstein family tomb, in the Old Jewish Cemetery on ul. \u015al\u0119\u017cna, Wroc\u0142aw. Ludwig died in 1933, during the early phase of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ushmm.org\/m\/pdfs\/Publication_OP_2003-01.pdf\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Enteignung<\/em><\/a><i class=\"far fa-file-pdf\"><\/i>, leaving his family to face an increasingly hostile future.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Wroc\u0142aw - Goldstein-Hirschel tomb.jpg\" alt=\"Ludwig Hirschel's name on Goldstein family tomb\">\n    <figcaption>Ludwig Hirschel (3 May 1860 \u2013 15 December 1933)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Clara was reunited with Georg and Else in Riebnig in May 1942, around six months after her daughter and son-in-law had been interned there. She didn't stay long, however, as the Nazi authorities would have considered a 69-year-old woman unsuited to carrying out forced labour in the woodland surrounding the camp.<\/p>\n<p>Once selected for deportation on 24 August, she was forced to walk the six kilometres to Poppelau (Popiel\u00f3w) train station with 217 others, arriving in Breslau the following day. If she had sufficient funds in her bank account she would have signed a contract for the purchase of an 'apartment' in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theholocaustexplained.org\/the-camps\/theresienstadt-a-case-study\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Theresienstadt ghetto<\/a>, which by 1942 was mainly used to house prominent and elderly Jews. The so-called <em>Heimeinkaufsvertrag<\/em> (home buying contract) was simply another form of spoliation of Jewish property: on Clara's arrival at Theresienstadt she would have been processed at the &quot;sluice gate&quot;, staying in unheated barracks for several days, before being assigned to an overcrowded, unsanitary house emptied of its furniture by the previous owner.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"w-80\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Theresienstadt - rooftops.jpg\" alt=\"Theresienstadt ghetto rooftops\">\n    <figcaption>Theresienstadt ghetto from above. Attribution: artist unknown, \u00a9 Jewish Council of Jewish Communities Prague<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>By 1942, a quarter of new arrivals at Theresienstadt died within six weeks, due to the scarcity of food, prevalence of disease, and poor medical conditions in the ghetto. The self-administration adopted a strategy to save as many children and young people as possible, to allow them to emigrate to Palestine after the war, which severely disadvantaged the elderly. Almost all elderly prisoners who were not deported from Theresienstadt died there, making it inconceivable that Clara would survive the camp.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"w-80\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Theresienstadt - In the Living Quarters.jpg\" alt=\"In the Living Quarters - Bed\u0159ich Fritta\">\n    <figcaption>Conditions in Theresienstadt. Attribution: <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:In_the_Living_Quarters.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bed\u0159ich Fritta<\/a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>However, Clara didn't die at Theresienstadt, managing somehow to survive for over a month. On 27 September 1942 she was selected for transportation to &quot;another ghetto&quot; by the self-administration, before being marched three kilometres to Bauschowitz train station. The average age of deportees on this transport was 72, with those who died on the march to the train station loaded onto train cars nonetheless, in order to maintain quotas. The train left Bauschowitz on 29 September, headed to the notorious <a href=\"https:\/\/muzeumtreblinka.eu\/en\/informacje\/treblinka-ii\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">extermination camp at Treblinka<\/a>, where it arrived a couple of days later via Dresden, Breslau, Posen and Warsaw. Of the 2000 Jews on board this transport, not a single person is known to have survived.<\/p>\n<p>I don't know whether Clara died en route to Treblinka or at the camp itself, and I don't know if she would have been aware that she was passing through her hometown of Breslau on the way. These cruel 'homecomings' seem to be a feature of the drawn-out torture and murder of my family, and I often wonder if at that point they might have retained any hope of survival. I think it's unlikely, given that rumours of deportations to extermination camps were supposed to have been rife around the camp at Riebnig as early as 1941. I also wonder what Else knew of her mother's fate after their separation in August. It seems unlikely there was any means for Clara to have contacted her, especially given the accelerated timescale of her deportation from Theresienstadt to Treblinka. When Clara was selected for deportation in August, Else must have known she would never see her mother again, having perhaps experienced some relief only a few months prior when she joined the family in Riebnig.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"w-70\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Treblinka - memorial (2).jpg\" alt=\"Memorial at Treblinka II extermination camp\">\n    <figcaption>Memorial at Treblinka II. Attribution: Fotokon<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Prisoners incapable of labour were gassed almost immediately on arrival at Treblinka, sometimes having been tortured beforehand. I don't want to detail that here. Long before I began this research, I set limits on what I exposed myself to, deliberately stepping back from some material. Nothing in the historical record in relation to the Shoah could reasonably be described as gratuitous, but I find that unless I draw boundaries somewhere I'm less capable of absorbing what must be understood. I barely spoke for a day after reading <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jewishbookcouncil.org\/book\/fear-anti-semitism-in-poland-after-auschwitz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jan Gross's <em>Fear<\/em><\/a>. Engaging with that research wasn't just an intellectual exercise but something that reverberated inward\u2014the intensity of it and the scale of what it described were completely overwhelming. It probably doesn't help that the sense of distance that might otherwise exist is collapsed by the knowledge that this is my family's history, and it's inevitable that this proximity intensifies my response.<\/p>\n<p>I've long described myself as a philosophical pessimist, and I genuinely have no idea how anyone can encounter this material\u2014the absolute horror of it, alongside the knowledge that people continue to treat one another in this way\u2014and emerge with anything other than the darkest possible view of humanity.<\/p>\n<p>Clara Olga Hirschel (n\u00e9e Goldstein), 1873\u20131942.<\/p>","css":"","js":"","created":"2026-01-10 11:35:57","updated":"2026-01-11 19:37:35","author":"1","category":"5","status":"published","comments":"0"}},{"data":{"id":"10","title":"Embezzled by a notorious Nazi war criminal","slug":"embezzled-by-a-notorious-nazi-war-criminal","description":"My paternal great-great-grandfather was Max Kornicker, born 11 May 1853 in Posen (now Pozna\u0144), in what was then the Kingdom of Prussia. He had several siblings, one of whom was Louis, born 12 September 1855. Louis married Jenny Moos in Berlin in 1888, moved to his new bride's hometown of Erfurt, Thuringia, and founded a factory in the city manufacturing woollen goods. He died in 1919 and it's pres\u2026","markdown":"My paternal great-great-grandfather was Max Kornicker, born 11 May 1853 in Posen (now Pozna\u0144), in what was then the Kingdom of Prussia. He had several siblings, one of whom was Louis, born 12 September 1855.\n\nLouis married Jenny Moos in Berlin in 1888, moved to his new bride's hometown of Erfurt, Thuringia, and founded a factory in the city manufacturing woollen goods. He died in 1919 and it's presumed that Wollwarenfabrik L. Kornicker passed to a son, as a building application was signed in 1921 by an 'L. Kornicker'.\n\nThis is where events take a turn. While scouring the internet for more information about the company, I discovered multiple references to Wollwarenfabrik L. Kornicker in relation to the notorious Nazi child molester and war criminal <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Oskar_Dirlewanger\" target=\"_blank\"  rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Oskar Dirlewanger<\/a>.\n\n<figure class=\"w-70 portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Oskar Dirlewanger.jpg\" alt=\"Oskar Dirlewanger\">\n\t<figcaption>Dirlewanger in 1944. Attribution: <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-S73495,_Oskar_Dirlewanger.jpg\">Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-S73495 \/ Anton Ahrens \/ CC-BY-SA 3.0<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/de\/deed.en\">CC BY-SA 3.0 DE<\/a>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nIt appears that in 1928 Dirlewanger resigned his position in the NSDAP to take up a senior role in my great-great-granduncle's company, embezzling money from the business over a four-year period and donating it to the <em>Sturmabteilung<\/em> (SA), who were colloquially known as the \"Brownshirts\". These funds helped the Brownshirts buy weapons that would have been used against those to whom they were ideologically and otherwise opposed, including Jews, communists, trade unionists and even shopkeepers who stocked the wrong brand of cigarettes. It feels like a cruel irony that money embezzled from a Jewish family was used to inflict misery on other Jewish families, but such private acts of theft gave way to an even more sinister programme of state expropriation once the Nazi authorities consolidated power in the 1930s. In 1938, the Brownshirts were instrumental in carrying out the <a href=\"https:\/\/encyclopedia.ushmm.org\/content\/en\/article\/kristallnacht\" target=\"_blank\"  rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kristallnacht pogrom<\/a> alongside the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Schutzstaffel\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Schutzstaffel<\/em> (SS)<\/a>, resulting in the arrest of over 30,000 Jewish men, as well as the destruction of thousands of synagogues and Jewish businesses throughout Nazi Germany.\n\nDirlewanger represents the absolute worst of humanity. He was a known violent antisemite long before his association with the Brownshirts, was convicted of the rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1935, and his behaviour during the war\u2014while leading a penal military unit of the Waffen-SS\u2014was so depraved that I'd rather not write the details here. We're talking about mass murder and throwing babies into fire to burn to death levels of absolute depravity.\n\nAnother disquieting twist in the story is that Wollwarenfabrik L. Kornicker was sold in 1935 to <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Erma_Werke\" target=\"_blank\"  rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Erfurter Maschinenfabrik (ERMA)<\/a>, who manufactured many of the firearms used by the SA, SS and Heer (German Army) in their campaign of murder throughout Europe and beyond. The manufacture of these weapons during the war involved the use of slave labour (<em>Zwangsarbeitslager<\/em>), with around 2000 workers housed in barracks in Erfurt.\n\nThere are many gaps in the records in Thuringia and as such I haven't been able to discover whether Louis's son survived the Shoah. His mother's family had already emigrated to New York by the late nineteenth century, so perhaps that route was available to him. If he did survive, and subsequently learned of Dirlewanger's crimes\u2014not to mention the role ERMA played in furnishing the German war machine\u2014I can\u2019t imagine how it felt knowing that his family\u2019s business became so entwined with the darkest chapters of the twentieth century. It's difficult enough to process my own relationship to this history, three or four generations removed.\n\nThanks to Anne Palmowski at the Stadtarchiv in Erfurt for her help locating the documents that allowed me to confirm much of the above.\n","html":"<p>My paternal great-great-grandfather was Max Kornicker, born 11 May 1853 in Posen (now Pozna\u0144), in what was then the Kingdom of Prussia. He had several siblings, one of whom was Louis, born 12 September 1855.<\/p>\n<p>Louis married Jenny Moos in Berlin in 1888, moved to his new bride's hometown of Erfurt, Thuringia, and founded a factory in the city manufacturing woollen goods. He died in 1919 and it's presumed that Wollwarenfabrik L. Kornicker passed to a son, as a building application was signed in 1921 by an 'L. Kornicker'.<\/p>\n<p>This is where events take a turn. While scouring the internet for more information about the company, I discovered multiple references to Wollwarenfabrik L. Kornicker in relation to the notorious Nazi child molester and war criminal <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Oskar_Dirlewanger\" target=\"_blank\"  rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Oskar Dirlewanger<\/a>.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"w-70 portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Oskar Dirlewanger.jpg\" alt=\"Oskar Dirlewanger\">\n    <figcaption>Dirlewanger in 1944. Attribution: <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-S73495,_Oskar_Dirlewanger.jpg\">Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-S73495 \/ Anton Ahrens \/ CC-BY-SA 3.0<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/de\/deed.en\">CC BY-SA 3.0 DE<\/a>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>It appears that in 1928 Dirlewanger resigned his position in the NSDAP to take up a senior role in my great-great-granduncle's company, embezzling money from the business over a four-year period and donating it to the <em>Sturmabteilung<\/em> (SA), who were colloquially known as the &quot;Brownshirts&quot;. These funds helped the Brownshirts buy weapons that would have been used against those to whom they were ideologically and otherwise opposed, including Jews, communists, trade unionists and even shopkeepers who stocked the wrong brand of cigarettes. It feels like a cruel irony that money embezzled from a Jewish family was used to inflict misery on other Jewish families, but such private acts of theft gave way to an even more sinister programme of state expropriation once the Nazi authorities consolidated power in the 1930s. In 1938, the Brownshirts were instrumental in carrying out the <a href=\"https:\/\/encyclopedia.ushmm.org\/content\/en\/article\/kristallnacht\" target=\"_blank\"  rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kristallnacht pogrom<\/a> alongside the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Schutzstaffel\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Schutzstaffel<\/em> (SS)<\/a>, resulting in the arrest of over 30,000 Jewish men, as well as the destruction of thousands of synagogues and Jewish businesses throughout Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n<p>Dirlewanger represents the absolute worst of humanity. He was a known violent antisemite long before his association with the Brownshirts, was convicted of the rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1935, and his behaviour during the war\u2014while leading a penal military unit of the Waffen-SS\u2014was so depraved that I'd rather not write the details here. We're talking about mass murder and throwing babies into fire to burn to death levels of absolute depravity.<\/p>\n<p>Another disquieting twist in the story is that Wollwarenfabrik L. Kornicker was sold in 1935 to <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Erma_Werke\" target=\"_blank\"  rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Erfurter Maschinenfabrik (ERMA)<\/a>, who manufactured many of the firearms used by the SA, SS and Heer (German Army) in their campaign of murder throughout Europe and beyond. The manufacture of these weapons during the war involved the use of slave labour (<em>Zwangsarbeitslager<\/em>), with around 2000 workers housed in barracks in Erfurt.<\/p>\n<p>There are many gaps in the records in Thuringia and as such I haven't been able to discover whether Louis's son survived the Shoah. His mother's family had already emigrated to New York by the late nineteenth century, so perhaps that route was available to him. If he did survive, and subsequently learned of Dirlewanger's crimes\u2014not to mention the role ERMA played in furnishing the German war machine\u2014I can\u2019t imagine how it felt knowing that his family\u2019s business became so entwined with the darkest chapters of the twentieth century. It's difficult enough to process my own relationship to this history, three or four generations removed.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to Anne Palmowski at the Stadtarchiv in Erfurt for her help locating the documents that allowed me to confirm much of the above.<\/p>","css":"","js":"","created":"2025-12-01 21:09:24","updated":"2026-01-11 12:07:43","author":"1","category":"5","status":"published","comments":"0"}},{"data":{"id":"14","title":"The transit camp for Jews at Riebnig (Part II)","slug":"the-transit-camp-for-jews-at-riebnig-part-ii","description":"Rybna (formally Riebnig) is a small settlement located along the Oder river in Opole Voivodeship, home to 300 or so people, many of whom seem to be involved in farming. There's a school building but no school, and no shops that I'm aware of. At the edge of the village there's a modest stadium where LKS Rybna play their home games (their club crest is a shark, and Rybna translates literally to \"Fis\u2026","markdown":"Rybna (formally Riebnig) is a small settlement located along the Oder river in Opole Voivodeship, home to 300 or so people, many of whom seem to be involved in farming. There's a school building but no school, and no shops that I'm aware of. At the edge of the village there's a modest stadium where LKS Rybna play their home games (their club crest is a shark, and Rybna translates literally to \"Fish\"). The village seems to be visited each year by a stork that pitches up on Odrza\u0144ska, with the remnants of its nest still visible during my visit this week.\n\nI won't claim to understand the demographics or political composition of the village, but I snooped their Facebook page and it looks like a fairly typical, vibrant enough rural community. The harvest festival and All Saints' Day seem to be the big annual events. Unfortunately, the surrounding area seems to suffer badly from flooding, due to its location right by the Oder.\n\nThe sense of being unwelcome I talked about in a previous post was perhaps the result of projection on my part. During my Facebook snooping I looked for references to the transit camp my great-grandparents were deported to in 1941, and one of the two posts I found was an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/naszarybna\/posts\/pfbid02tNHPE6mRqoJCSrMas2S12CkY9vbzzwthJf9K77JyfHBkvN74bQo9fEuTKgEhZXDAl\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">April Fools joke about it being requisitioned to be used to house refugees<\/a><i class=\"fab fa-facebook-square\"><\/i>. There were comments in response to that about gas chambers and applying to be camp commandant.\n\n<figure class=\"w-60\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - Facebook page.jpg\" alt=\"W Rybnej powstanie ob\u00f3z dla Uchod\u017ac\u00f3w\">\n\t<figcaption>\"A refugee camp will be built in Rybna\". Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/naszarybna\/posts\/pfbid02tNHPE6mRqoJCSrMas2S12CkY9vbzzwthJf9K77JyfHBkvN74bQo9fEuTKgEhZXDAl\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Facebook<\/a><\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nThis discovery, along with my understanding of antisemitism in post-war Poland, likely primed me to feel unwelcome long before anyone even noticed my presence. But then it wasn't long before I had an interaction that reinforced that feeling. My Polish still needs a lot of work, but the person I spoke to made it very clear that German Jews were the people on earth he cared least about, after Muslims.\n\nThe final sentence in Alfred Konieczny's 1996 publication <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nli.org.il\/en\/articles\/RAMBI990001799680705171\/NLI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>The Transit Camp for Breslau Jews at Riebnig in Lower Silesia (1941\u20131943)<\/em><\/a> reads as follows:\n\n<blockquote>\n\t<p>The existence of the camp has not been commemorated. A plaque citing the fiftieth anniversary of the Silesian Uprising is mounted to the wall of the local school. A second plaque, dedicated to the memory of the Jewish inmates in the camp, deserves to be affixed next to it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\nThe plaque commemorating the Silesian Uprising remains, and there's another dedicated to the devastating flood of 1997, but as far as I can tell there's still nothing in memory of the several hundred Jews who tried to survive in appalling conditions in the transit camp still standing in the centre of the village. Many of those individuals died of illness and malnutrition in the camp itself, and also by drowning in the Oder while forced to work on the riverbank. I'm not an especially sentimental person but my grandparents' plight and that of their fellow deportees should be memorialised at this site, largely because I believe the presence of a plaque could educate future generations, not only about the dangers of antisemitism but of prejudice more generally. I don't believe I'm best placed to campaign for the installation of such a memorial, but in the absence of anybody else interested in doing so, I'm going to give it a decent crack.\n\nI ended the post yesterday just as I headed down to the river.\n\n<figure class=\"w-60\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - river.jpg\" alt=\"Oder river near Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - sunstars.jpg\" alt=\"Reflections on the Oder River\">\n<\/figure>\n\nI walked in the cool November sun, past thin woodland and ploughed fields, to the system of locks that controls water levels and allows barges to move freight up and down the river. A little way past the locks was a tree-lined 'avenue' of young oak, with leaves still clinging to branches but many more carpeting the floor in an ankle-deep layer of orange underfoot. I was once again faced with the dissonance of such an outwardly benign landscape being the scene of human tragedy, while recognising that this tension is hardly unusual.\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - tree-lined avenue.jpg\" alt=\"Tree-lined avenue by the Oder River, near Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure class=\"w-70\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - treeline.jpg\" alt=\"Tree-lined avenue by the Oder River, near Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n\nI sat on the damp grass and ate another boiled egg (three a day is standard), then woke about half an hour later. I don't remember lying down, but the short nap and the boiled egg were enough to get me back to Rybna, where I managed yet again to not take a picture of the building I'd come so far to see.\n\nI did take pictures on the second and third days I visited the village, albeit while doing so I became convinced that my approach to this is wrong, that for the pictures to offer emotional weight the message needs to be conveyed in a much simpler way. Rather than the work being analytical, research-led and broad in its scope, what if it were tighter, but nonetheless presented using a looser aesthetic? I think there's a raw energy driving this, something that's bordering on anger. What do I have to get angry about? In relation to this work, plenty: the injustice of persecution, the absurdity of prejudice, the inaction of people who know better and the poverty of public discourse.\n\nSwitching approach means sacrificing the hundred or so frames I've already got, but acknowledging the necessity of letting them go is no doubt important in terms of my development as a photographer.","html":"<p>Rybna (formally Riebnig) is a small settlement located along the Oder river in Opole Voivodeship, home to 300 or so people, many of whom seem to be involved in farming. There's a school building but no school, and no shops that I'm aware of. At the edge of the village there's a modest stadium where LKS Rybna play their home games (their club crest is a shark, and Rybna translates literally to &quot;Fish&quot;). The village seems to be visited each year by a stork that pitches up on Odrza\u0144ska, with the remnants of its nest still visible during my visit this week.<\/p>\n<p>I won't claim to understand the demographics or political composition of the village, but I snooped their Facebook page and it looks like a fairly typical, vibrant enough rural community. The harvest festival and All Saints' Day seem to be the big annual events. Unfortunately, the surrounding area seems to suffer badly from flooding, due to its location right by the Oder.<\/p>\n<p>The sense of being unwelcome I talked about in a previous post was perhaps the result of projection on my part. During my Facebook snooping I looked for references to the transit camp my great-grandparents were deported to in 1941, and one of the two posts I found was an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/naszarybna\/posts\/pfbid02tNHPE6mRqoJCSrMas2S12CkY9vbzzwthJf9K77JyfHBkvN74bQo9fEuTKgEhZXDAl\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">April Fools joke about it being requisitioned to be used to house refugees<\/a><i class=\"fab fa-facebook-square\"><\/i>. There were comments in response to that about gas chambers and applying to be camp commandant.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"w-60\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - Facebook page.jpg\" alt=\"W Rybnej powstanie ob\u00f3z dla Uchod\u017ac\u00f3w\">\n    <figcaption>\"A refugee camp will be built in Rybna\". Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/naszarybna\/posts\/pfbid02tNHPE6mRqoJCSrMas2S12CkY9vbzzwthJf9K77JyfHBkvN74bQo9fEuTKgEhZXDAl\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Facebook<\/a><\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>This discovery, along with my understanding of antisemitism in post-war Poland, likely primed me to feel unwelcome long before anyone even noticed my presence. But then it wasn't long before I had an interaction that reinforced that feeling. My Polish still needs a lot of work, but the person I spoke to made it very clear that German Jews were the people on earth he cared least about, after Muslims.<\/p>\n<p>The final sentence in Alfred Konieczny's 1996 publication <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nli.org.il\/en\/articles\/RAMBI990001799680705171\/NLI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>The Transit Camp for Breslau Jews at Riebnig in Lower Silesia (1941\u20131943)<\/em><\/a> reads as follows:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n    <p>The existence of the camp has not been commemorated. A plaque citing the fiftieth anniversary of the Silesian Uprising is mounted to the wall of the local school. A second plaque, dedicated to the memory of the Jewish inmates in the camp, deserves to be affixed next to it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The plaque commemorating the Silesian Uprising remains, and there's another dedicated to the devastating flood of 1997, but as far as I can tell there's still nothing in memory of the several hundred Jews who tried to survive in appalling conditions in the transit camp still standing in the centre of the village. Many of those individuals died of illness and malnutrition in the camp itself, and also by drowning in the Oder while forced to work on the riverbank. I'm not an especially sentimental person but my grandparents' plight and that of their fellow deportees should be memorialised at this site, largely because I believe the presence of a plaque could educate future generations, not only about the dangers of antisemitism but of prejudice more generally. I don't believe I'm best placed to campaign for the installation of such a memorial, but in the absence of anybody else interested in doing so, I'm going to give it a decent crack.<\/p>\n<p>I ended the post yesterday just as I headed down to the river.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"w-60\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - river.jpg\" alt=\"Oder river near Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - sunstars.jpg\" alt=\"Reflections on the Oder River\">\n<\/figure>\n<p>I walked in the cool November sun, past thin woodland and ploughed fields, to the system of locks that controls water levels and allows barges to move freight up and down the river. A little way past the locks was a tree-lined 'avenue' of young oak, with leaves still clinging to branches but many more carpeting the floor in an ankle-deep layer of orange underfoot. I was once again faced with the dissonance of such an outwardly benign landscape being the scene of human tragedy, while recognising that this tension is hardly unusual.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - tree-lined avenue.jpg\" alt=\"Tree-lined avenue by the Oder River, near Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n<figure class=\"w-70\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - treeline.jpg\" alt=\"Tree-lined avenue by the Oder River, near Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n<p>I sat on the damp grass and ate another boiled egg (three a day is standard), then woke about half an hour later. I don't remember lying down, but the short nap and the boiled egg were enough to get me back to Rybna, where I managed yet again to not take a picture of the building I'd come so far to see.<\/p>\n<p>I did take pictures on the second and third days I visited the village, albeit while doing so I became convinced that my approach to this is wrong, that for the pictures to offer emotional weight the message needs to be conveyed in a much simpler way. Rather than the work being analytical, research-led and broad in its scope, what if it were tighter, but nonetheless presented using a looser aesthetic? I think there's a raw energy driving this, something that's bordering on anger. What do I have to get angry about? In relation to this work, plenty: the injustice of persecution, the absurdity of prejudice, the inaction of people who know better and the poverty of public discourse.<\/p>\n<p>Switching approach means sacrificing the hundred or so frames I've already got, but acknowledging the necessity of letting them go is no doubt important in terms of my development as a photographer.<\/p>","css":"","js":"","created":"2025-11-15 20:46:12","updated":"2026-01-11 12:08:03","author":"1","category":"5","status":"published","comments":"0"}},{"data":{"id":"13","title":"The transit camp for Jews at Riebnig","slug":"the-transit-camp-for-jews-at-riebnig","description":"Today is the third consecutive day I've travelled from Wroc\u0142aw to Rybna, a small village known as Riebnig when my great-grandparents were interned in a transit camp there between November 1941 and March 1943, prior to their deportation to Auschwitz. The most convenient way to reach Rybna would be by car, but when reading Alfred Konieczny's research on the transit camp, I noted that deportees were\u2026","markdown":"Today is the third consecutive day I've travelled from Wroc\u0142aw to Rybna, a small village known as Riebnig when my great-grandparents were interned in a transit camp there between November 1941 and March 1943, prior to their deportation to Auschwitz.\n\nThe most convenient way to reach Rybna would be by car, but when reading Alfred Konieczny's <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nli.org.il\/en\/articles\/RAMBI990001799680705171\/NLI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">research on the transit camp<\/a>, I noted that deportees were transported by rail to the nearby town of Poppelau (now Popiel\u00f3w), before walking the roughly six kilometres to Riebnig. The railway line is still in use, although only two trains stop at Popiel\u00f3w on weekdays and none at the weekend. The train from Wroc\u0142aw G\u0142\u00f3wny to Popiel\u00f3w is scheduled at 4:20am, so please forgive me if this post is pure nonsense, as this is the third day I've been up since 3am.\n\nThe train running along this route is a rattly old Polregio EMU with seats that might as well be wooden planks, so you can feel every defect in the rails vibrate through your core, almost as though you were travelling on a Northern Rail Pacer to Accrington. The guard working Wednesday morning seemed surprised and sympathetic that I was travelling from Wroc\u0142aw to Popiel\u00f3w, explaining that if I missed my train home that afternoon I might never be seen again (more Accrington vibes).\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - train.jpg\" alt=\"On the train from Wroc\u0142aw to Popiel\u00f3w\">\n<\/figure>\n\nOnce he'd shuffled off, I settled in to listen to the train clattering over rail joints and to wait for any sign of the sun rising. I didn't see another soul on the train before it eventually slowed for Popiel\u00f3w station, still in the pitch dark, and with the hour-and-a-half journey having given me time to reflect on how my grandparents must have felt travelling this exact route 84 years ago. I can't relate. I've lived a charmed life and have never needed to survive or die.\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - Popiel\u00f3w station.jpg\" alt=\"Popiel\u00f3w train station\">\n\t<figcaption>Popiel\u00f3w train station, photographed on return trip<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nThere's not much going on in Popiel\u00f3w at 6am. The closest I came to seeing signs of life were the odd mechanical window shutter juddering open with a jolt, and a stray mongrel following me along the road to Rybna. I say stray, but I think these dogs wandering in rural areas are people's dogs that are allowed to roam, as was common in England a few decades ago.\n\nWhen I got to the outskirts of Popiel\u00f3w I noticed something unusual: a mid-nineteenth-century villa in front of a ruined factory that had a bent chimney stack looming precipitously over it. If chimney stacks have a phallic quality to them, this one is impotent. \n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - Popiel\u00f3w stack.jpg\" alt=\"Bent chimney stack in Popiel\u00f3w\">\n\t<figcaption>Photographed on return trip<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nContinuing on to Rybna along a single-lane country road, I passed beneath a pylon crackling in the morning thaw, the high-voltage current ionising the air as frost on its conductors began to melt. My headtorch illuminated wildlife in the fields and woodland along the way, including deer, foxes, and a polecat (that could have been an oversized stoat).\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - selfie.jpg\" alt=\"Selfie on the walk to Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - roadside (2).jpg\" alt=\"Roadside scene on the walk to Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - roadside (3).jpg\" alt=\"Roadside scene on the walk to Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - sunrise.jpg\" alt=\"Sunrise outside Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure class=\"bottom\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - road sign.jpg\" alt=\"Road sign outside Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n\nI stopped to take a picture of a roadside shrine outside a cowshed, then came across another unfinished shrine that was completed by the time I came back through on the way home. Polish work ethic.\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - shrine (2).jpg\" alt=\"Roadside shrine being constructed outside Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - shrine (3).jpg\" alt=\"Completed roadside shrine outside Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n\nAfter a while I noticed a church spire on the horizon, which I knew represented the location of the building in which my grandparents were interned. \"Interned\" doesn't feel like a stark enough term, but \"imprisoned\" wouldn't be completely accurate as they were able to leave the building, at least to work and collect firewood.\n\n<figure class=\"w-70\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - horizon.jpg\" alt=\"Rybna on the horizon\">\n\t<figcaption>Rybna on the horizon, with church spire just about visible<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nSo now I had a landmark to aim for, I decided to take a circuitous route. Despite the long build-up to this moment, and perhaps because of it, I didn't feel ready to face the building and its place in my family's story. Rather than approaching it directly, I walked between wheatfields and around the perimeter of the still-sleeping village, eventually coming across a rusted gate and 1940s-era guardhouse standing in a state of semi-ruin.\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - transit camp (2).jpg\" alt=\"Rybna (Riebnig) transit camp guardhouse\">\n\t<figcaption>Guardhouse at the transit camp in Rybna (Riebnig)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - transit camp.jpg\" alt=\"Rybna (Riebnig) transit camp\">\n\t<figcaption>Main transit camp building in Rybna<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nI stood for a while, looking at the camp and trying to imagine it as it was in 1941: a prison of sorts, certainly a site of misery and coercion and fear. A component in the machinery of industrial-scale persecution. I don't know whether I lack imagination, and I don't believe I lack empathy, but it didn't menace me in the way I thought it might. Despite the guardhouse and fence, it doesn't have many of the attributes that such places are supposed to possess, that I'm used to seeing in this context. It's now used as some kind of agricultural store, and there were ducks and geese washing their plumage in its shadow. I found myself looking at the sort of bucolic scene that could have been painted by an artist with the sensibilities of John Constable and <a href=\"https:\/\/maruanimercier.com\/artists\/74-george-shaw\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">George Shaw<\/a> combined. A beautiful thing to anyone attuned to that way of seeing.\n\nThis isn't to say that I was enjoying being there. In fact, I felt a deep sense of disquiet, disorientation, even, possibly due to the contradictions inherent in the scene. Nor did I feel welcome in the village. It was almost 8am now and I could see curtains twitching, people observing me suspiciously, their dogs discouraging me in the way that any effective guard dog would. The few interactions I had with people were difficult, and not only because of my faltering Polish. This is understandable in a rural context, and frankly, I get strange looks in Wroc\u0142aw\u2014one of the more cosmopolitan cities in Poland\u2014but it nonetheless made me feel uncomfortable. I visited Rybna for three reasons: to trace the outlines of my family's history there, to attempt to memorialise the people interned, and to make photographs. I hadn't made a single photograph since I saw the church spire, and felt no desire to.\n\nI decided to walk to the river, where my grandparents would have worked in the woods and along the riverbank, to see if I could find a secluded spot to eat lunch and absorb the dissonance of the place. 9am is lunchtime when you set your alarm for 3am. I didn't get as far as the river, as I spotted two strange-looking trees in the distance and wanted to see if they might make a picture. It turned out they were part of another shrine, this one inside the village cemetery, where I sat on a bench placed at the end of someone's grave.\n\n<figure class=\"w-60\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - cemetery.jpg\" alt=\"Cemetery in Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - cemetery (2).jpg\" alt=\"Shrine at the cemetery in Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n\nI don't remember how the boiled egg or the sandwich tasted, but I do remember feeling quite deflated, as though all the purpose that had motivated me to come to this place had dissolved into a kind of dull, directionless fatigue. This was the moment I settled on <em>Weltschmerz<\/em> as the working title for my project, and also when I began to suspect that the outline I have for turning my pictures into a body of work might not do justice to the places I'm visiting or the people whose stories I'm trying to tell.\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - lunch.jpg\" alt=\"Packed lunch at cemetery in Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n\nI'll write the <a href=\"\/text\/the-transit-camp-for-jews-at-riebnig-part-ii\">second half<\/a> of this tomorrow after I've caught up on some sleep and am in a better mood.","html":"<p>Today is the third consecutive day I've travelled from Wroc\u0142aw to Rybna, a small village known as Riebnig when my great-grandparents were interned in a transit camp there between November 1941 and March 1943, prior to their deportation to Auschwitz.<\/p>\n<p>The most convenient way to reach Rybna would be by car, but when reading Alfred Konieczny's <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nli.org.il\/en\/articles\/RAMBI990001799680705171\/NLI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">research on the transit camp<\/a>, I noted that deportees were transported by rail to the nearby town of Poppelau (now Popiel\u00f3w), before walking the roughly six kilometres to Riebnig. The railway line is still in use, although only two trains stop at Popiel\u00f3w on weekdays and none at the weekend. The train from Wroc\u0142aw G\u0142\u00f3wny to Popiel\u00f3w is scheduled at 4:20am, so please forgive me if this post is pure nonsense, as this is the third day I've been up since 3am.<\/p>\n<p>The train running along this route is a rattly old Polregio EMU with seats that might as well be wooden planks, so you can feel every defect in the rails vibrate through your core, almost as though you were travelling on a Northern Rail Pacer to Accrington. The guard working Wednesday morning seemed surprised and sympathetic that I was travelling from Wroc\u0142aw to Popiel\u00f3w, explaining that if I missed my train home that afternoon I might never be seen again (more Accrington vibes).<\/p>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - train.jpg\" alt=\"On the train from Wroc\u0142aw to Popiel\u00f3w\">\n<\/figure>\n<p>Once he'd shuffled off, I settled in to listen to the train clattering over rail joints and to wait for any sign of the sun rising. I didn't see another soul on the train before it eventually slowed for Popiel\u00f3w station, still in the pitch dark, and with the hour-and-a-half journey having given me time to reflect on how my grandparents must have felt travelling this exact route 84 years ago. I can't relate. I've lived a charmed life and have never needed to survive or die.<\/p>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - Popiel\u00f3w station.jpg\" alt=\"Popiel\u00f3w train station\">\n    <figcaption>Popiel\u00f3w train station, photographed on return trip<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>There's not much going on in Popiel\u00f3w at 6am. The closest I came to seeing signs of life were the odd mechanical window shutter juddering open with a jolt, and a stray mongrel following me along the road to Rybna. I say stray, but I think these dogs wandering in rural areas are people's dogs that are allowed to roam, as was common in England a few decades ago.<\/p>\n<p>When I got to the outskirts of Popiel\u00f3w I noticed something unusual: a mid-nineteenth-century villa in front of a ruined factory that had a bent chimney stack looming precipitously over it. If chimney stacks have a phallic quality to them, this one is impotent. <\/p>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - Popiel\u00f3w stack.jpg\" alt=\"Bent chimney stack in Popiel\u00f3w\">\n    <figcaption>Photographed on return trip<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Continuing on to Rybna along a single-lane country road, I passed beneath a pylon crackling in the morning thaw, the high-voltage current ionising the air as frost on its conductors began to melt. My headtorch illuminated wildlife in the fields and woodland along the way, including deer, foxes, and a polecat (that could have been an oversized stoat).<\/p>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - selfie.jpg\" alt=\"Selfie on the walk to Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - roadside (2).jpg\" alt=\"Roadside scene on the walk to Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - roadside (3).jpg\" alt=\"Roadside scene on the walk to Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - sunrise.jpg\" alt=\"Sunrise outside Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n<figure class=\"bottom\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - road sign.jpg\" alt=\"Road sign outside Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n<p>I stopped to take a picture of a roadside shrine outside a cowshed, then came across another unfinished shrine that was completed by the time I came back through on the way home. Polish work ethic.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - shrine (2).jpg\" alt=\"Roadside shrine being constructed outside Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - shrine (3).jpg\" alt=\"Completed roadside shrine outside Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n<p>After a while I noticed a church spire on the horizon, which I knew represented the location of the building in which my grandparents were interned. &quot;Interned&quot; doesn't feel like a stark enough term, but &quot;imprisoned&quot; wouldn't be completely accurate as they were able to leave the building, at least to work and collect firewood.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"w-70\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - horizon.jpg\" alt=\"Rybna on the horizon\">\n    <figcaption>Rybna on the horizon, with church spire just about visible<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>So now I had a landmark to aim for, I decided to take a circuitous route. Despite the long build-up to this moment, and perhaps because of it, I didn't feel ready to face the building and its place in my family's story. Rather than approaching it directly, I walked between wheatfields and around the perimeter of the still-sleeping village, eventually coming across a rusted gate and 1940s-era guardhouse standing in a state of semi-ruin.<\/p>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - transit camp (2).jpg\" alt=\"Rybna (Riebnig) transit camp guardhouse\">\n    <figcaption>Guardhouse at the transit camp in Rybna (Riebnig)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - transit camp.jpg\" alt=\"Rybna (Riebnig) transit camp\">\n    <figcaption>Main transit camp building in Rybna<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>I stood for a while, looking at the camp and trying to imagine it as it was in 1941: a prison of sorts, certainly a site of misery and coercion and fear. A component in the machinery of industrial-scale persecution. I don't know whether I lack imagination, and I don't believe I lack empathy, but it didn't menace me in the way I thought it might. Despite the guardhouse and fence, it doesn't have many of the attributes that such places are supposed to possess, that I'm used to seeing in this context. It's now used as some kind of agricultural store, and there were ducks and geese washing their plumage in its shadow. I found myself looking at the sort of bucolic scene that could have been painted by an artist with the sensibilities of John Constable and <a href=\"https:\/\/maruanimercier.com\/artists\/74-george-shaw\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">George Shaw<\/a> combined. A beautiful thing to anyone attuned to that way of seeing.<\/p>\n<p>This isn't to say that I was enjoying being there. In fact, I felt a deep sense of disquiet, disorientation, even, possibly due to the contradictions inherent in the scene. Nor did I feel welcome in the village. It was almost 8am now and I could see curtains twitching, people observing me suspiciously, their dogs discouraging me in the way that any effective guard dog would. The few interactions I had with people were difficult, and not only because of my faltering Polish. This is understandable in a rural context, and frankly, I get strange looks in Wroc\u0142aw\u2014one of the more cosmopolitan cities in Poland\u2014but it nonetheless made me feel uncomfortable. I visited Rybna for three reasons: to trace the outlines of my family's history there, to attempt to memorialise the people interned, and to make photographs. I hadn't made a single photograph since I saw the church spire, and felt no desire to.<\/p>\n<p>I decided to walk to the river, where my grandparents would have worked in the woods and along the riverbank, to see if I could find a secluded spot to eat lunch and absorb the dissonance of the place. 9am is lunchtime when you set your alarm for 3am. I didn't get as far as the river, as I spotted two strange-looking trees in the distance and wanted to see if they might make a picture. It turned out they were part of another shrine, this one inside the village cemetery, where I sat on a bench placed at the end of someone's grave.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"w-60\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - cemetery.jpg\" alt=\"Cemetery in Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - cemetery (2).jpg\" alt=\"Shrine at the cemetery in Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n<p>I don't remember how the boiled egg or the sandwich tasted, but I do remember feeling quite deflated, as though all the purpose that had motivated me to come to this place had dissolved into a kind of dull, directionless fatigue. This was the moment I settled on <em>Weltschmerz<\/em> as the working title for my project, and also when I began to suspect that the outline I have for turning my pictures into a body of work might not do justice to the places I'm visiting or the people whose stories I'm trying to tell.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Rybna - lunch.jpg\" alt=\"Packed lunch at cemetery in Rybna\">\n<\/figure>\n<p>I'll write the <a href=\"\/text\/the-transit-camp-for-jews-at-riebnig-part-ii\">second half<\/a> of this tomorrow after I've caught up on some sleep and am in a better mood.<\/p>","css":"","js":"","created":"2025-11-14 20:14:26","updated":"2026-01-12 12:16:51","author":"1","category":"5","status":"published","comments":"0"}},{"data":{"id":"18","title":"K\u00f3rnik and the origins of the Kornicker family name","slug":"kornik-and-the-origins-of-the-kornicker-family-name","description":"Kingston is a kind of anglicisation of Kornicker, my grandfather's surname before he changed it when applying to become a naturalised British citizen in 1947. We're not sure why Kingston, but perhaps the choice was prompted by some association with place (more likely Kingston upon Thames than Hull). In retrospect, the choice seems carefully judged: unambiguously English, with deep Anglo-Saxon root\u2026","markdown":"Kingston is a kind of anglicisation of Kornicker, my grandfather's surname before he changed it when applying to become a naturalised British citizen in 1947. We're not sure why Kingston, but perhaps the choice was prompted by some association with place (more likely Kingston upon Thames than Hull). In retrospect, the choice seems carefully judged: unambiguously English, with deep Anglo-Saxon roots, socially neutral and familiar without being conspicuous.\n\nKornicker is easier to decipher, as the family would have lived in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/K\u00f3rnik\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">K\u00f3rnik<\/a> when they were compelled to adopt family names by the Prussian authorities in the early nineteenth century. The name is useful in that it fixes a point on a map, though the place itself resists such economy.\n\nYou'd be forgiven for thinking that K\u00f3rnik is just a 20-minute train journey from Pozna\u0144, then disappointed when you realise the train station is an hour's walk from the town itself. The Google reviews read like a short anthology of grievance, with Polish State Railways (PKP) variously accused of dishonesty, incompetence and a lack of basic human decency. There's a good chance PKP went with K\u00f3rnik so they didn't have to call it Szczodrzykowo, the actual closest settlement to the station and a word that perhaps only people living in Szczodrzykowo can pronounce.\n\nIn any case, I wasn't disappointed. A well-maintained path led away from the busy road and through crop fields, and it was enough to follow it. Walking is a form of seeing, and by extension a form of photographing, which is largely the reason I'm here.\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - fields.jpg\" alt=\"Fields outside K\u00f3rnik\">\n<\/figure>\n\nThe weather has to be especially grim before I grow weary of these walks through what I suppose is a fairly unremarkable landscape. There's the vernacular to examine: barns patched and repatched over the years with whatever material was to hand, abandoned farm cottages with broken window panes and ragged net curtains blowing in the wind, the shallow infrastructure of ditches and farm tracks quietly governing my progress.\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - fence.jpg\" alt=\"Fence near K\u00f3rnik\">\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - shrine.jpg\" alt=\"Roadside shrine near K\u00f3rnik\">\n<\/figure>\n\nI find myself thinking about how my ancestors experienced this place\u2014whether they came this way, and whether there's anything they might recognise. The ancient-looking barn perhaps, and the odd farmhouse or cottage, but not much else, at least until I arrive in K\u00f3rnik proper.\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - Wojska Polskiego.jpg\" alt=\"Ulica Wojska Polskiego, K\u00f3rnik\">\n\t<figcaption>Ulica Wojska Polskiego, K\u00f3rnik<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nThey wouldn't have found <a href=\"https:\/\/cja.huji.ac.il\/browser.php?mode=set&id=22163\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the synagogue<\/a>. A modest wooden building with an octagonal pseudodome, it was built in the eighteenth century and destroyed in 1940.\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - synagogue.jpg\" alt=\"Wooden synagogue in K\u00f3rnik\">\n\t<figcaption>Wooden synagogue in K\u00f3rnik (before 1939). Attribution: Ulatowski, R. \u00a9 Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IS PAN)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nAn inscription, in Hebrew and German, survives above the passage that once led from the market square to the synagogue: \"This is the gate of the Eternal One; the righteous enter through it\". The passage now serves as a lapidarium\u2014the <a href=\"https:\/\/pl.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ucho_Igielne_w_K\u00f3rniku\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Eye of the Needle<\/a>\u2014where matzevot recovered from the local Jewish cemetery are stacked. The door is opened once a year on 1 November. I visited a few days too late, on 4 November. In fact I struggled to find the lapidarium at all, and no one I asked seemed to have a clue where it was. One woman I spoke to was interested in seeing it, and we encountered it together for the first time, despite her having lived in the town her entire life.\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - lapidarium.jpg\" alt=\"Eye of the Needle lapidarium in K\u00f3rnik\">\n\t<figcaption>Eye of the Needle lapidarium and gate in K\u00f3rnik<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nK\u00f3rnik's <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kornik.info\/ratusz-w-korniku\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">town hall<\/a> might have seemed familiar, but perhaps disquietingly so: the present building is a Neo-Baroque structure designed to resemble the eighteenth-century town hall that burned down in 1909.\n\n<figure class=\"w-80\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - rathaus.jpg\" alt=\"Architectural drawing of K\u00f3rnik town hall (1910)\">\n\t<figcaption>Architectural drawing of replacement town hall in K\u00f3rnik (1910). Attribution: Waszak, M.<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nIt was claimed that the original building was struck by lightning, and its survival may not have been helped by a superstition that fires started by lightning should never be extinguished. The building burned for 24 hours; the town's fire brigade was ill-equipped to reach the flames, and assistance from Pozna\u0144 never arrived. There was also speculation that the fire had been started deliberately, as the mayor had been petitioning the Prussian authorities for the building's replacement. Whatever the circumstances surrounding this event, the new town hall was completed by 1910. On 20 October 1939, one of its gable walls was used for the execution of sixteen Polish civilians; other inhabitants of K\u00f3rnik were murdered in nearby Mosina on the same day. During the occupation, a Polish resistance cell operated in the town, and the underground press was printed there.\n\nThe <a href=\"https:\/\/zabytek.pl\/en\/obiekty\/kornik-kornik-zespol-zamkowo-parkowy-wraz-z-kosciolem-parafialny\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">castle<\/a>\u2014home to one of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bkpan.poznan.pl\/en-gb\/home-en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">oldest libraries in Poland<\/a>\u2014looks much as it would have in the early nineteenth century, and the arboretum likewise.\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - castle.jpg\" alt=\"K\u00f3rnik castle\">\n\t<figcaption>K\u00f3rnik castle<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - castle outbuildings.jpg\" alt=\"K\u00f3rnik castle outbuildings\">\n\t<figcaption>Castle outbuildings<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nA friend told me I should have visited earlier to see the trees at their autumn best, but I felt I'd timed my visit well enough: a thick layer of yellow lay underfoot, with plenty of oak, beech, and ash leaves still clinging on above.\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - arboretum.jpg\" alt=\"K\u00f3rnik arboretum\">\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - arboretum (2).jpg\" alt=\"K\u00f3rnik arboretum\">\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - arboretum (4).jpg\" alt=\"K\u00f3rnik arboretum\">\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - arboretum (5).jpg\" alt=\"K\u00f3rnik arboretum\">\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - arboretum (7).jpg\" alt=\"K\u00f3rnik arboretum\">\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - arboretum (6).jpg\" alt=\"K\u00f3rnik arboretum\">\n<\/figure>\n\nThe only people I encountered inside the arboretum were groups of women raking fallen leaves, something I see regularly in parks throughout Poland and other parts of Central Europe, but rarely in the UK.\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - leaf pile.jpg\" alt=\"Pile of leaves in K\u00f3rnik\">\n<\/figure>\n\nThis process of raking leaves into countless piles has a sort of ceremonial or ritualistic quality to it, through which I think it's possible to discern differences in how public space is conceived and maintained. The arboretum, for all its apparent naturalness, is a managed environment, its seasonal decay folded into a rhythm of labour that spoke less of efficiency than of stewardship, and which left little room for forms of ecological continuity that resist tidiness and control. It reminded me of a park near my home in Yorkshire, where volunteers have planted squat hedgerows around trees and obstructed desire lines with ornamental planting or fencing. At Christmas and Easter, cheap imported tat hangs from any available branch. There's very little intact natural environment that remains in this country, and yet these people are doing what they can to domesticate a field, to have it resemble someone's garden. In K\u00f3rnik, the only things I saw hanging from branches were red squirrels and bright orange maple leaves caught among the conifers.\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - arboretum (3).jpg\" alt=\"K\u00f3rnik arboretum\">\n<\/figure>\n\nAcross the road from the arboretum is a ribbon lake, its long, narrow form edged by a boardwalk that traces part of the shoreline. Further along is a modest pier of concrete and steel, and on the far side of the water a beach, reached via a modern suspension bridge built with support from the European Regional Development Fund. A couple of teenagers were fishing from the pier in the low sun, but the lakeside was otherwise deserted\u2014a far cry from its appearance in mid-summer, when the restaurants are open and the place fills with visitors. K\u00f3rnik is one of the region's main domestic tourist destinations, and I've been told it comes alive in the spring.\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - lake.jpg\" alt=\"K\u00f3rnickie Lake\">\n<\/figure>\n\nAfter a while I turned away from the lake and began the walk back towards the station, following the busy ulica Dworcowa (Station Street), passing beneath the still busier Expressway S11, before reaching the path through fields. In the evening light, the low sun flattened the land and lengthened shadows cast by ditches, fence posts, and the occasional tree. Features that had seemed incidental on the outward walk now asserted themselves more clearly. A flock of geese flew overhead in a distorted W formation, calling loudly, as if urging one another on towards a favoured wintering ground. In the distance, a train bound for Warsaw, its interior brightly lit, quietly cut the horizon in two.\n\nAt the end of the path I photographed a deteriorating, heavily graffitied building in the near-dark, before picking my way across the railway line to reach the westbound platform.\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - railway building.jpg\" alt=\"Old railway building near K\u00f3rnik station\">\n<\/figure>\n\nI had 20 minutes to wait, alone, as is often the case when I travel by train in Poland. To distract myself from the cold I thought about the pictures I'd made and how they might fit into the project, but without a narrative structure through which to think in terms of inclusion rather than accumulation, it was an exercise that quickly stalled. For now, I'm content to rely largely on intuition, and have been putting off any deliberate decisions around form and sequence.","html":"<p>Kingston is a kind of anglicisation of Kornicker, my grandfather's surname before he changed it when applying to become a naturalised British citizen in 1947. We're not sure why Kingston, but perhaps the choice was prompted by some association with place (more likely Kingston upon Thames than Hull). In retrospect, the choice seems carefully judged: unambiguously English, with deep Anglo-Saxon roots, socially neutral and familiar without being conspicuous.<\/p>\n<p>Kornicker is easier to decipher, as the family would have lived in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/K\u00f3rnik\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">K\u00f3rnik<\/a> when they were compelled to adopt family names by the Prussian authorities in the early nineteenth century. The name is useful in that it fixes a point on a map, though the place itself resists such economy.<\/p>\n<p>You'd be forgiven for thinking that K\u00f3rnik is just a 20-minute train journey from Pozna\u0144, then disappointed when you realise the train station is an hour's walk from the town itself. The Google reviews read like a short anthology of grievance, with Polish State Railways (PKP) variously accused of dishonesty, incompetence and a lack of basic human decency. There's a good chance PKP went with K\u00f3rnik so they didn't have to call it Szczodrzykowo, the actual closest settlement to the station and a word that perhaps only people living in Szczodrzykowo can pronounce.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, I wasn't disappointed. A well-maintained path led away from the busy road and through crop fields, and it was enough to follow it. Walking is a form of seeing, and by extension a form of photographing, which is largely the reason I'm here.<\/p>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - fields.jpg\" alt=\"Fields outside K\u00f3rnik\">\n<\/figure>\n<p>The weather has to be especially grim before I grow weary of these walks through what I suppose is a fairly unremarkable landscape. There's the vernacular to examine: barns patched and repatched over the years with whatever material was to hand, abandoned farm cottages with broken window panes and ragged net curtains blowing in the wind, the shallow infrastructure of ditches and farm tracks quietly governing my progress.<\/p>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - fence.jpg\" alt=\"Fence near K\u00f3rnik\">\n<\/figure>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - shrine.jpg\" alt=\"Roadside shrine near K\u00f3rnik\">\n<\/figure>\n<p>I find myself thinking about how my ancestors experienced this place\u2014whether they came this way, and whether there's anything they might recognise. The ancient-looking barn perhaps, and the odd farmhouse or cottage, but not much else, at least until I arrive in K\u00f3rnik proper.<\/p>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - Wojska Polskiego.jpg\" alt=\"Ulica Wojska Polskiego, K\u00f3rnik\">\n    <figcaption>Ulica Wojska Polskiego, K\u00f3rnik<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>They wouldn't have found <a href=\"https:\/\/cja.huji.ac.il\/browser.php?mode=set&id=22163\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the synagogue<\/a>. A modest wooden building with an octagonal pseudodome, it was built in the eighteenth century and destroyed in 1940.<\/p>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - synagogue.jpg\" alt=\"Wooden synagogue in K\u00f3rnik\">\n    <figcaption>Wooden synagogue in K\u00f3rnik (before 1939). Attribution: Ulatowski, R. \u00a9 Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IS PAN)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>An inscription, in Hebrew and German, survives above the passage that once led from the market square to the synagogue: &quot;This is the gate of the Eternal One; the righteous enter through it&quot;. The passage now serves as a lapidarium\u2014the <a href=\"https:\/\/pl.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ucho_Igielne_w_K\u00f3rniku\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Eye of the Needle<\/a>\u2014where matzevot recovered from the local Jewish cemetery are stacked. The door is opened once a year on 1 November. I visited a few days too late, on 4 November. In fact I struggled to find the lapidarium at all, and no one I asked seemed to have a clue where it was. One woman I spoke to was interested in seeing it, and we encountered it together for the first time, despite her having lived in the town her entire life.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - lapidarium.jpg\" alt=\"Eye of the Needle lapidarium in K\u00f3rnik\">\n    <figcaption>Eye of the Needle lapidarium and gate in K\u00f3rnik<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>K\u00f3rnik's <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kornik.info\/ratusz-w-korniku\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">town hall<\/a> might have seemed familiar, but perhaps disquietingly so: the present building is a Neo-Baroque structure designed to resemble the eighteenth-century town hall that burned down in 1909.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"w-80\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - rathaus.jpg\" alt=\"Architectural drawing of K\u00f3rnik town hall (1910)\">\n    <figcaption>Architectural drawing of replacement town hall in K\u00f3rnik (1910). Attribution: Waszak, M.<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>It was claimed that the original building was struck by lightning, and its survival may not have been helped by a superstition that fires started by lightning should never be extinguished. The building burned for 24 hours; the town's fire brigade was ill-equipped to reach the flames, and assistance from Pozna\u0144 never arrived. There was also speculation that the fire had been started deliberately, as the mayor had been petitioning the Prussian authorities for the building's replacement. Whatever the circumstances surrounding this event, the new town hall was completed by 1910. On 20 October 1939, one of its gable walls was used for the execution of sixteen Polish civilians; other inhabitants of K\u00f3rnik were murdered in nearby Mosina on the same day. During the occupation, a Polish resistance cell operated in the town, and the underground press was printed there.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/zabytek.pl\/en\/obiekty\/kornik-kornik-zespol-zamkowo-parkowy-wraz-z-kosciolem-parafialny\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">castle<\/a>\u2014home to one of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bkpan.poznan.pl\/en-gb\/home-en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">oldest libraries in Poland<\/a>\u2014looks much as it would have in the early nineteenth century, and the arboretum likewise.<\/p>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - castle.jpg\" alt=\"K\u00f3rnik castle\">\n    <figcaption>K\u00f3rnik castle<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - castle outbuildings.jpg\" alt=\"K\u00f3rnik castle outbuildings\">\n    <figcaption>Castle outbuildings<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>A friend told me I should have visited earlier to see the trees at their autumn best, but I felt I'd timed my visit well enough: a thick layer of yellow lay underfoot, with plenty of oak, beech, and ash leaves still clinging on above.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - arboretum.jpg\" alt=\"K\u00f3rnik arboretum\">\n<\/figure>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - arboretum (2).jpg\" alt=\"K\u00f3rnik arboretum\">\n<\/figure>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - arboretum (4).jpg\" alt=\"K\u00f3rnik arboretum\">\n<\/figure>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - arboretum (5).jpg\" alt=\"K\u00f3rnik arboretum\">\n<\/figure>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - arboretum (7).jpg\" alt=\"K\u00f3rnik arboretum\">\n<\/figure>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - arboretum (6).jpg\" alt=\"K\u00f3rnik arboretum\">\n<\/figure>\n<p>The only people I encountered inside the arboretum were groups of women raking fallen leaves, something I see regularly in parks throughout Poland and other parts of Central Europe, but rarely in the UK.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - leaf pile.jpg\" alt=\"Pile of leaves in K\u00f3rnik\">\n<\/figure>\n<p>This process of raking leaves into countless piles has a sort of ceremonial or ritualistic quality to it, through which I think it's possible to discern differences in how public space is conceived and maintained. The arboretum, for all its apparent naturalness, is a managed environment, its seasonal decay folded into a rhythm of labour that spoke less of efficiency than of stewardship, and which left little room for forms of ecological continuity that resist tidiness and control. It reminded me of a park near my home in Yorkshire, where volunteers have planted squat hedgerows around trees and obstructed desire lines with ornamental planting or fencing. At Christmas and Easter, cheap imported tat hangs from any available branch. There's very little intact natural environment that remains in this country, and yet these people are doing what they can to domesticate a field, to have it resemble someone's garden. In K\u00f3rnik, the only things I saw hanging from branches were red squirrels and bright orange maple leaves caught among the conifers.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - arboretum (3).jpg\" alt=\"K\u00f3rnik arboretum\">\n<\/figure>\n<p>Across the road from the arboretum is a ribbon lake, its long, narrow form edged by a boardwalk that traces part of the shoreline. Further along is a modest pier of concrete and steel, and on the far side of the water a beach, reached via a modern suspension bridge built with support from the European Regional Development Fund. A couple of teenagers were fishing from the pier in the low sun, but the lakeside was otherwise deserted\u2014a far cry from its appearance in mid-summer, when the restaurants are open and the place fills with visitors. K\u00f3rnik is one of the region's main domestic tourist destinations, and I've been told it comes alive in the spring.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - lake.jpg\" alt=\"K\u00f3rnickie Lake\">\n<\/figure>\n<p>After a while I turned away from the lake and began the walk back towards the station, following the busy ulica Dworcowa (Station Street), passing beneath the still busier Expressway S11, before reaching the path through fields. In the evening light, the low sun flattened the land and lengthened shadows cast by ditches, fence posts, and the occasional tree. Features that had seemed incidental on the outward walk now asserted themselves more clearly. A flock of geese flew overhead in a distorted W formation, calling loudly, as if urging one another on towards a favoured wintering ground. In the distance, a train bound for Warsaw, its interior brightly lit, quietly cut the horizon in two.<\/p>\n<p>At the end of the path I photographed a deteriorating, heavily graffitied building in the near-dark, before picking my way across the railway line to reach the westbound platform.<\/p>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/K\u00f3rnik - railway building.jpg\" alt=\"Old railway building near K\u00f3rnik station\">\n<\/figure>\n<p>I had 20 minutes to wait, alone, as is often the case when I travel by train in Poland. To distract myself from the cold I thought about the pictures I'd made and how they might fit into the project, but without a narrative structure through which to think in terms of inclusion rather than accumulation, it was an exercise that quickly stalled. For now, I'm content to rely largely on intuition, and have been putting off any deliberate decisions around form and sequence.<\/p>","css":"","js":"","created":"2025-11-04 19:00:07","updated":"2026-01-11 12:08:54","author":"1","category":"5","status":"published","comments":"0"}},{"data":{"id":"9","title":"Auschwitz via Riebnig: unravelling the family record","slug":"auschwitz-via-riebnig-unravelling-the-family-record","description":"My very earliest attempts to understand something of the fate of my great-grandparents led me to JewishGen.org and the misconception that they were murdered at Theriesenstadt concentration camp, in modern-day Czechia, having passed through a transit camp at \"Riebnig\". Documents in the Arolsen Archive relating to my grandfather's search for his parents further muddied the water, with references to\u2026","markdown":"My very earliest attempts to understand something of the fate of my great-grandparents led me to <a href=\"https:\/\/jewishgen.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">JewishGen.org<\/a> and the misconception that they were murdered at Theriesenstadt concentration camp, in modern-day Czechia, having passed through a transit camp at \"Riebnig\".\n\nDocuments in the Arolsen Archive relating to my grandfather's search for his parents further muddied the water, with references to Theriesenstadt (again) and even Latvia. Letters in the Archive show that at some point in the mid-1950s my grandfather was assisted in his search by a friend in Munich\u2014an E. G. von Reinhart\u2014but her efforts seem to have been in vain.\n\nThe record on the JewishGen website has subsequently been updated with references to the Bundesarchiv's <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bundesarchiv.de\/gedenkbuch\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Gedenkbuch<\/em><\/a> and Yad Vashem's <a href=\"https:\/\/collections.yadvashem.org\/en\/names\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names<\/em><\/a>, which state that Georg and Else Kornicker were in fact deported to Auschwitz in March 1943.\n\nI believe it was research conducted by Alfred Konieczny that led to this change, specifically the records he discovered in the State Archive in Wroc\u0142aw that show categorically that my great-grandparents were deported from Augustusstra\u00dfe 77 to Riebnig in November 1941, then onto Auschwitz via Breslau in March 1943. Konieczny's research was published in two articles: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nli.org.il\/en\/articles\/RAMBI990001799680705171\/NLI\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>The transit camp for Breslau Jews at Riebnig in Lower Silesia (1941-1943)<\/em><\/a> in 1996, and <em>Tormersdorf, Gr\u00fcssau, Riebnig: obozy przejsciowe dla Zydow Dolnego Slaska z lat 1941-1943<\/em> in 1997.\n\n<figure class=\"w-80 portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Tormersdorf, Gr\u00fcssau, Riebnig (p. 155).jpg\" alt=\"Page 155 from Tormersdorf, Gr\u00fcssau, Riebnig by Alfred Konieczny\">\n\t<figcaption>See entries 273 and 274 on page 155 of Tormersdorf, Gr\u00fcssau, Riebnig by Alfred Konieczny<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n\"VII\" adjacent to my grandparents' names in his 1997 article references a table in the 1996 article with a deportation date of 5 March 1943. Yad Vashem have the date as 4 March and the discrepancy likely reflects whether this denotes the transfer from Riebnig to Breslau, or from Breslau to Auschwitz. It's not important.\n\nThank you to Jenna Grams at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.leeds-art.ac.uk\/research\/leeds-arts-university-library\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Leeds Arts University Library<\/a> and staff at The Mitchell Library in Glasgow for helping me confirm this by sharing scans of the published research in question. I've since been able to read the full document at the <a href=\"https:\/\/wienerholocaustlibrary.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Wiener Holocaust Library<\/a> in London, another institution I'd like to thank for their support.\n\nI\u2019ll be travelling to Riebnig (Rybna) in the coming weeks. The building where my grandparents were imprisoned still stands. One section has been converted for use as a church, the other used to store agricultural equipment.","html":"<p>My very earliest attempts to understand something of the fate of my great-grandparents led me to <a href=\"https:\/\/jewishgen.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">JewishGen.org<\/a> and the misconception that they were murdered at Theriesenstadt concentration camp, in modern-day Czechia, having passed through a transit camp at &quot;Riebnig&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>Documents in the Arolsen Archive relating to my grandfather's search for his parents further muddied the water, with references to Theriesenstadt (again) and even Latvia. Letters in the Archive show that at some point in the mid-1950s my grandfather was assisted in his search by a friend in Munich\u2014an E. G. von Reinhart\u2014but her efforts seem to have been in vain.<\/p>\n<p>The record on the JewishGen website has subsequently been updated with references to the Bundesarchiv's <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bundesarchiv.de\/gedenkbuch\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Gedenkbuch<\/em><\/a> and Yad Vashem's <a href=\"https:\/\/collections.yadvashem.org\/en\/names\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names<\/em><\/a>, which state that Georg and Else Kornicker were in fact deported to Auschwitz in March 1943.<\/p>\n<p>I believe it was research conducted by Alfred Konieczny that led to this change, specifically the records he discovered in the State Archive in Wroc\u0142aw that show categorically that my great-grandparents were deported from Augustusstra\u00dfe 77 to Riebnig in November 1941, then onto Auschwitz via Breslau in March 1943. Konieczny's research was published in two articles: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nli.org.il\/en\/articles\/RAMBI990001799680705171\/NLI\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>The transit camp for Breslau Jews at Riebnig in Lower Silesia (1941-1943)<\/em><\/a> in 1996, and <em>Tormersdorf, Gr\u00fcssau, Riebnig: obozy przejsciowe dla Zydow Dolnego Slaska z lat 1941-1943<\/em> in 1997.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"w-80 portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Tormersdorf, Gr\u00fcssau, Riebnig (p. 155).jpg\" alt=\"Page 155 from Tormersdorf, Gr\u00fcssau, Riebnig by Alfred Konieczny\">\n    <figcaption>See entries 273 and 274 on page 155 of Tormersdorf, Gr\u00fcssau, Riebnig by Alfred Konieczny<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>&quot;VII&quot; adjacent to my grandparents' names in his 1997 article references a table in the 1996 article with a deportation date of 5 March 1943. Yad Vashem have the date as 4 March and the discrepancy likely reflects whether this denotes the transfer from Riebnig to Breslau, or from Breslau to Auschwitz. It's not important.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you to Jenna Grams at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.leeds-art.ac.uk\/research\/leeds-arts-university-library\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Leeds Arts University Library<\/a> and staff at The Mitchell Library in Glasgow for helping me confirm this by sharing scans of the published research in question. I've since been able to read the full document at the <a href=\"https:\/\/wienerholocaustlibrary.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Wiener Holocaust Library<\/a> in London, another institution I'd like to thank for their support.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll be travelling to Riebnig (Rybna) in the coming weeks. The building where my grandparents were imprisoned still stands. One section has been converted for use as a church, the other used to store agricultural equipment.<\/p>","css":"","js":"","created":"2025-10-29 18:02:02","updated":"2026-01-11 12:09:16","author":"1","category":"5","status":"published","comments":"0"}},{"data":{"id":"7","title":"Wiedereinb\u00fcrgerung","slug":"wiedereinburgerung","description":"My grandfather's half-brother, and my great-uncle, was Peter Kornicker, born in 1917 in Breslau to my great-grandfather Georg and his first wife, Herta (n\u00e9e Cohen). His mother died in 1919 when he was just a year old. Peter was lined up to work in the family law firm, but with the situation in Germany growing increasingly difficult he left Breslau in 1937, travelling to the Netherlands to attend a\u2026","markdown":"My grandfather's half-brother, and my great-uncle, was Peter Kornicker, born in 1917 in Breslau to my great-grandfather Georg and his first wife, Herta (n\u00e9e Cohen). His mother died in 1919 when he was just a year old.\n\nPeter was lined up to work in the family law firm, but with the situation in Germany growing increasingly difficult he left Breslau in 1937, travelling to the Netherlands to attend a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hakhshara\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Hachshara<\/a> at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.joodswerkdorp.nl\/en\/home-en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Werkdorp Wieringermeer<\/a>. Hachshara (or Hakhshara) is a Hebrew word meaning \"preparation\" and refers to a programme of vocational education that students would undergo prior to their emigration to Palestine. Peter underwent <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Aliyah_Bet\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ha'apala<\/a> in 1939, reaching Palestine on the notorious <a href=\"https:\/\/danielabraham.net\/tree\/related\/dora\/\" target=\"_blank\"  rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\"Death Ship\" Dora<\/a>. He later joined the Jewish Brigade and fought in the Italian campaign, before being severely wounded. On his return to Palestine he changed his name to Dan Karni, and despite his disability joined the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org\/the-haganah\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Haganah<\/a>\u2014a Zionist paramilitary organisation that operated in defense of Jewish settlements in Palestine. He went on to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), attaining the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.\n\nYou can assume that his commitment to the Israeli state was unwavering and it's my understanding that the British administration's conduct during the Mandate caused some tension between my grandfather and his brother. There was a period following the end of World War II when my grandfather was serving as an NCO in the Royal Tank Regiment while Dan was an officer in the newly founded IDF. I don't know how unusual such a circumstance would have been, but it strikes me as somewhat extraordinary.\n\nSo in light of that I was very surprised when I came across a document contained in the Arolsen Archive that shows that Dan applied for renaturalisation (<a href=\"https:\/\/uk.diplo.de\/uk-en\/02\/citizenship\/naturalisation-of-victims-of-nazi-persecution-2481938\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Wiedereinb\u00fcrgerung<\/a>) as a German citizen, in 1971.\n\n<figure class=\"w-90 portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Wiedereinb\u00fcrgerung application.jpg\" alt=\"Wiedereinb\u00fcrgerung application\">\n\t<figcaption>Document relating to a Wiedereinb\u00fcrgerung application made by my great-uncle in 1971<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nWas this a genuine attempt at emigration? A fallback for his family in case the security situation in Israel deteriorated? Or could the application be part of an attempt to claim restitution from the German government?\n\nIt seems the application failed, as the text in the red stamp dated 1972 implies the search was completed with a negative outcome (\u00dcBERPR\u00dcFUNG: NEGATIV).\n\nThe document also shows that by 1971 Dan believed his parents were murdered at Auschwitz, but my grandfather's prior attempts to confirm their place of death came to nought, and it's my understanding that their deportation to Auschwitz from Riebnig wasn't revealed until the Polish researcher Alfred Konieczny published <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ushmm.org\/online\/hsv\/source_view.php?SourceId=32392\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">his research<\/a> in 1997.\n\nWith regards Wiedereinb\u00fcrgerung, this is the provision I used in 2016 to obtain German citizenship. I have an idea that my command of the German language ranks among the very worst of all German citizens alive.\n\n","html":"<p>My grandfather's half-brother, and my great-uncle, was Peter Kornicker, born in 1917 in Breslau to my great-grandfather Georg and his first wife, Herta (n\u00e9e Cohen). His mother died in 1919 when he was just a year old.<\/p>\n<p>Peter was lined up to work in the family law firm, but with the situation in Germany growing increasingly difficult he left Breslau in 1937, travelling to the Netherlands to attend a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hakhshara\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Hachshara<\/a> at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.joodswerkdorp.nl\/en\/home-en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Werkdorp Wieringermeer<\/a>. Hachshara (or Hakhshara) is a Hebrew word meaning &quot;preparation&quot; and refers to a programme of vocational education that students would undergo prior to their emigration to Palestine. Peter underwent <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Aliyah_Bet\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ha'apala<\/a> in 1939, reaching Palestine on the notorious <a href=\"https:\/\/danielabraham.net\/tree\/related\/dora\/\" target=\"_blank\"  rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">&quot;Death Ship&quot; Dora<\/a>. He later joined the Jewish Brigade and fought in the Italian campaign, before being severely wounded. On his return to Palestine he changed his name to Dan Karni, and despite his disability joined the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org\/the-haganah\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Haganah<\/a>\u2014a Zionist paramilitary organisation that operated in defense of Jewish settlements in Palestine. He went on to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), attaining the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.<\/p>\n<p>You can assume that his commitment to the Israeli state was unwavering and it's my understanding that the British administration's conduct during the Mandate caused some tension between my grandfather and his brother. There was a period following the end of World War II when my grandfather was serving as an NCO in the Royal Tank Regiment while Dan was an officer in the newly founded IDF. I don't know how unusual such a circumstance would have been, but it strikes me as somewhat extraordinary.<\/p>\n<p>So in light of that I was very surprised when I came across a document contained in the Arolsen Archive that shows that Dan applied for renaturalisation (<a href=\"https:\/\/uk.diplo.de\/uk-en\/02\/citizenship\/naturalisation-of-victims-of-nazi-persecution-2481938\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Wiedereinb\u00fcrgerung<\/a>) as a German citizen, in 1971.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"w-90 portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Wiedereinb\u00fcrgerung application.jpg\" alt=\"Wiedereinb\u00fcrgerung application\">\n    <figcaption>Document relating to a Wiedereinb\u00fcrgerung application made by my great-uncle in 1971<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Was this a genuine attempt at emigration? A fallback for his family in case the security situation in Israel deteriorated? Or could the application be part of an attempt to claim restitution from the German government?<\/p>\n<p>It seems the application failed, as the text in the red stamp dated 1972 implies the search was completed with a negative outcome (\u00dcBERPR\u00dcFUNG: NEGATIV).<\/p>\n<p>The document also shows that by 1971 Dan believed his parents were murdered at Auschwitz, but my grandfather's prior attempts to confirm their place of death came to nought, and it's my understanding that their deportation to Auschwitz from Riebnig wasn't revealed until the Polish researcher Alfred Konieczny published <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ushmm.org\/online\/hsv\/source_view.php?SourceId=32392\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">his research<\/a> in 1997.<\/p>\n<p>With regards Wiedereinb\u00fcrgerung, this is the provision I used in 2016 to obtain German citizenship. I have an idea that my command of the German language ranks among the very worst of all German citizens alive.<\/p>","css":"","js":"","created":"2025-10-28 18:27:25","updated":"2025-12-01 21:58:51","author":"1","category":"5","status":"published","comments":"0"}},{"data":{"id":"6","title":"The Arolsen Archives and evidence of lingering hope","slug":"the-arolsen-archives-and-evidence-of-lingering-hope","description":"A recent attempt to learn more about the fate of my great-grandparents, Georg and Else, led to the Arolsen Archives and the discovery of a Red Cross Enquiry made by my grandfather in 1946, when he was 20 years old. This is a single-page tracing request with scant information, and yet is a deeply human, personal document that carries within its bureaucratic form a suggestion of my grandfather's gri\u2026","markdown":"A recent attempt to learn more about the fate of my great-grandparents, Georg and Else, led to <a href=\"https:\/\/arolsen-archives.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener no referrer\">the Arolsen Archives<\/a> and the discovery of a Red Cross Enquiry made by my grandfather in 1946, when he was 20 years old.\n\n<figure class=\"w-100 portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Red Cross Enquiry.jpg\" alt=\"Red Cross Enquiry\">\n\t<figcaption>Red Cross Enquiry made by my grandfather on 23 January 1946<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nThis is a single-page tracing request with scant information, and yet is a deeply human, personal document that carries within its bureaucratic form a suggestion of my grandfather's grief, as well as the lingering hope that his parents might still be alive. The handwriting, which I'm confident is his own, collapses the distance between the page's administrative purpose and the personal anguish it records.\n\nA poignant detail is the sentence \"Last heard of to have some work in camp in Silesia\".\n\nGeorg and Else were interned at a camp in Riebnig, Germany (now Rybna, Opole Voivodeship, Poland) where they would have been forced into labour in the surrounding forest, collecting wood to strengthen the banks of the Oder. Deportees were reported to have drowned in the river there, as well as succumbing to illness due to malnutrition and poor conditions in the camp.\n\nI've no idea how Frank received word that his parents had been deported from Breslau to Riebnig, but if they did so by writing to him, it seems that they played down the nature of their internment. Another possibility is that the clerk who typed up this detail chose the phrase \"to have some work\" as a kind of bureaucratic euphemism that masks the reality of persecution. Either way, I think it stands as a small but telling ambiguity in the record.\n\nThe Charlottenstra\u00dfe address was the family home that Frank left, as Fritz Walter, in 1939. Unbeknownst to him, Georg and Else had been forced to move home twice since, to \"Judenhaus\" at Wallstra\u00dfe and Augustusstra\u00dfe, before being deported to Riebnig in 1941.\n\nThey were deported to Auschwitz on 5 March 1943, via their hometown of Breslau, in a perverse sort of 'homecoming' that might have briefly raised their spirits, as they likely wouldn't have been informed of their ultimate destination.\n","html":"<p>A recent attempt to learn more about the fate of my great-grandparents, Georg and Else, led to <a href=\"https:\/\/arolsen-archives.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener no referrer\">the Arolsen Archives<\/a> and the discovery of a Red Cross Enquiry made by my grandfather in 1946, when he was 20 years old.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"w-100 portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Red Cross Enquiry.jpg\" alt=\"Red Cross Enquiry\">\n    <figcaption>Red Cross Enquiry made by my grandfather on 23 January 1946<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>This is a single-page tracing request with scant information, and yet is a deeply human, personal document that carries within its bureaucratic form a suggestion of my grandfather's grief, as well as the lingering hope that his parents might still be alive. The handwriting, which I'm confident is his own, collapses the distance between the page's administrative purpose and the personal anguish it records.<\/p>\n<p>A poignant detail is the sentence &quot;Last heard of to have some work in camp in Silesia&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>Georg and Else were interned at a camp in Riebnig, Germany (now Rybna, Opole Voivodeship, Poland) where they would have been forced into labour in the surrounding forest, collecting wood to strengthen the banks of the Oder. Deportees were reported to have drowned in the river there, as well as succumbing to illness due to malnutrition and poor conditions in the camp.<\/p>\n<p>I've no idea how Frank received word that his parents had been deported from Breslau to Riebnig, but if they did so by writing to him, it seems that they played down the nature of their internment. Another possibility is that the clerk who typed up this detail chose the phrase &quot;to have some work&quot; as a kind of bureaucratic euphemism that masks the reality of persecution. Either way, I think it stands as a small but telling ambiguity in the record.<\/p>\n<p>The Charlottenstra\u00dfe address was the family home that Frank left, as Fritz Walter, in 1939. Unbeknownst to him, Georg and Else had been forced to move home twice since, to &quot;Judenhaus&quot; at Wallstra\u00dfe and Augustusstra\u00dfe, before being deported to Riebnig in 1941.<\/p>\n<p>They were deported to Auschwitz on 5 March 1943, via their hometown of Breslau, in a perverse sort of 'homecoming' that might have briefly raised their spirits, as they likely wouldn't have been informed of their ultimate destination.<\/p>","css":"","js":"","created":"2025-10-26 12:14:29","updated":"2025-12-05 19:14:15","author":"1","category":"5","status":"published","comments":"0"}},{"data":{"id":"5","title":"An excerpt from The Classic Slum by Robert Roberts","slug":"an-excerpt-from-the-classic-slum-robert-roberts","description":"I recently re-read Robert Roberts' classic, <em>The Classic Slum<\/em>. There's a passage in the text that I've included below that I think stands as one of the most quietly devastating pieces of moral realism in twentieth-century British writing\u2014an example of working-class self-critique that reveals how deprivation, fear and ignorance can deform empathy, yet also how individual acts of kindness can quietly\u2026","markdown":"I recently re-read Robert Roberts' classic, <em>The Classic Slum<\/em>.\n\n<figure class=\"w-60 portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Lowry.jpg\" alt=\"View from a window of the Royal Technical College, Salford, 1924. L. S. Lowry\">\n\t<figcaption>View from a window of the Royal Technical College, Salford, 1924. L. S. Lowry<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\nThere's a passage in the text that I've included below that I think stands as one of the most quietly devastating pieces of moral realism in twentieth-century British writing\u2014an example of working-class self-critique that reveals how deprivation, fear and ignorance can deform empathy, yet also how individual acts of kindness can quietly resist that deformation.\n\nIt\u2019s a passage that feels absolutely vital today, reminding us that decency depends not on comfort or circumstance, but on the courage to see others as human.\n\n<blockquote class=\"line indent\">\n\t<p>The Jews, twenty thousand strong, dwelt in an area adjacent to ours on the north side, some in a poverty so appalling that it shocked even us. Our own poor grew hostile. They sensed the menace of a horde of hungry foreigners seeking to share in charities which, they felt, as true-born Britons belonged to them alone. Odd Jews who strayed into the village were driven out at once. Very early in the century one did venture to set up a small second-hand clothing store. Ignored by the police, thugs arrived, carried his stock into the road and set fire to it. From then on we were saved from further contamination. In 1905 a new 'Aliens Immigration Act' barred the entry of the destitute altogether. No more 'Sheenies' came our way save one. Our elders tolerated a tall, bearded glazier who padded along the pavements clutching glass in a wooden frame and called diffidently, 'Vinders!' The young trailed behind, jeering, and mocking him with that same awful question howled down the centuries by anti-semites. Once, when he carried it on his back, the boys threw stones and broke his glass. Grown-ups lolled, amused, in doorways. (At police courts and elsewhere 'Sheenies' were always 'comic'.)<\/p>\n\t<p>'You don't shout after the glazier, do you?' my mother asked us sternly.<\/p>\n\t<p>'Never!' we lied.<\/p>\n\t<p>Once a winter, on sight of him, she would break a small scullery window with the end of a scrubbing brush (it cost ninepence to repair) because she hated to 'offer charity'. 'Go and tell the gentleman,' she should say, 'there's a job for him'.<\/p>\n\t<p>'Gentleman?' - the word seemed ill-chosen. He came to the back kitchen one afternoon out of a wind full of frozen sleet, wearing broken shoes and a frock-coat past his knees. He stood, big-eyed, beard frozen, and looked embarrassed. I watched too curiously till a nod from my mother sent me from the room. But going no further than the small ventilator outside, I climbed a box to peep in on what was now an odd sight. The Jew still stood gripping glass and wooden frame to his side, and my mother, close to him, was trying to remove that which, somehow, he seemed unwilling to give up. At last I understood: after hours of his wandering in the cold, cramp had locked one arm rigid to the body. She loosened his frock-coat. It swung open. The man was naked from the waist up. Then my mother did a shocking thing - she placed a hand in the folds of the garment and, standing very close now, began to rub life into his body and arm. Soon he relaxed and gently they removed the frame and the coat. I gazed, then stepped down - frightened at his emaciation. The tap ran. She was drawing hot water - bringing heat to his rod-like arm. Later when I looked again the window had been mended. They were standing drinking tea from cups without savers. The Jew offered her food from a newspaper. And she took and ate it! They talked smiling together like friends. I turned away disgusted. She seemed sullied.<\/p>\n\t<p>In the evening my mother looked up at me, cool and unrepentant from the sewing machine. 'The gentleman left a ball of putty,' she said. 'He thought you might like to do some modelling.'<\/p>\n\t<p>'Don't want it,' I grunted.<\/p>\n\t<p>'You take it,' she told me a little grimly, 'and let me have no nonsense!' But in the way of mothers, then to eight-year-old sons, she didn't deign to make any explanation. From that time on whenever the glazier was in the district he called upon her and they chatted over the shop counter, but with the war he came no more.<\/p>\n\t<p><cite>Roberts, R. (1971). <em>The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century<\/em>. Manchester: University of Manchester Press. pp. 171-173.<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\nIt shouldn't be necessary to stress that the author's mother is the most sympathetic figure in the book, functioning as its moral and emotional centre, but there's no harm in emphasising the point.\n\nThis is a beautifully written work, benefiting from syntax that's economical but nonetheless rhythmically deliberate, achieving a perfect balance between austerity and lyricism. Especially effective is the understated way in which Roberts allows moral revelation to arise indirectly, rather than through overt commentary. And it's very funny, the most I've laughed reading a book in a while.","html":"<p>I recently re-read Robert Roberts' classic, <em>The Classic Slum<\/em>.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"w-60 portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Lowry.jpg\" alt=\"View from a window of the Royal Technical College, Salford, 1924. L. S. Lowry\">\n    <figcaption>View from a window of the Royal Technical College, Salford, 1924. L. S. Lowry<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>There's a passage in the text that I've included below that I think stands as one of the most quietly devastating pieces of moral realism in twentieth-century British writing\u2014an example of working-class self-critique that reveals how deprivation, fear and ignorance can deform empathy, yet also how individual acts of kindness can quietly resist that deformation.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a passage that feels absolutely vital today, reminding us that decency depends not on comfort or circumstance, but on the courage to see others as human.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"line indent\">\n    <p>The Jews, twenty thousand strong, dwelt in an area adjacent to ours on the north side, some in a poverty so appalling that it shocked even us. Our own poor grew hostile. They sensed the menace of a horde of hungry foreigners seeking to share in charities which, they felt, as true-born Britons belonged to them alone. Odd Jews who strayed into the village were driven out at once. Very early in the century one did venture to set up a small second-hand clothing store. Ignored by the police, thugs arrived, carried his stock into the road and set fire to it. From then on we were saved from further contamination. In 1905 a new 'Aliens Immigration Act' barred the entry of the destitute altogether. No more 'Sheenies' came our way save one. Our elders tolerated a tall, bearded glazier who padded along the pavements clutching glass in a wooden frame and called diffidently, 'Vinders!' The young trailed behind, jeering, and mocking him with that same awful question howled down the centuries by anti-semites. Once, when he carried it on his back, the boys threw stones and broke his glass. Grown-ups lolled, amused, in doorways. (At police courts and elsewhere 'Sheenies' were always 'comic'.)<\/p>\n    <p>'You don't shout after the glazier, do you?' my mother asked us sternly.<\/p>\n    <p>'Never!' we lied.<\/p>\n    <p>Once a winter, on sight of him, she would break a small scullery window with the end of a scrubbing brush (it cost ninepence to repair) because she hated to 'offer charity'. 'Go and tell the gentleman,' she should say, 'there's a job for him'.<\/p>\n    <p>'Gentleman?' - the word seemed ill-chosen. He came to the back kitchen one afternoon out of a wind full of frozen sleet, wearing broken shoes and a frock-coat past his knees. He stood, big-eyed, beard frozen, and looked embarrassed. I watched too curiously till a nod from my mother sent me from the room. But going no further than the small ventilator outside, I climbed a box to peep in on what was now an odd sight. The Jew still stood gripping glass and wooden frame to his side, and my mother, close to him, was trying to remove that which, somehow, he seemed unwilling to give up. At last I understood: after hours of his wandering in the cold, cramp had locked one arm rigid to the body. She loosened his frock-coat. It swung open. The man was naked from the waist up. Then my mother did a shocking thing - she placed a hand in the folds of the garment and, standing very close now, began to rub life into his body and arm. Soon he relaxed and gently they removed the frame and the coat. I gazed, then stepped down - frightened at his emaciation. The tap ran. She was drawing hot water - bringing heat to his rod-like arm. Later when I looked again the window had been mended. They were standing drinking tea from cups without savers. The Jew offered her food from a newspaper. And she took and ate it! They talked smiling together like friends. I turned away disgusted. She seemed sullied.<\/p>\n    <p>In the evening my mother looked up at me, cool and unrepentant from the sewing machine. 'The gentleman left a ball of putty,' she said. 'He thought you might like to do some modelling.'<\/p>\n    <p>'Don't want it,' I grunted.<\/p>\n    <p>'You take it,' she told me a little grimly, 'and let me have no nonsense!' But in the way of mothers, then to eight-year-old sons, she didn't deign to make any explanation. From that time on whenever the glazier was in the district he called upon her and they chatted over the shop counter, but with the war he came no more.<\/p>\n    <p><cite>Roberts, R. (1971). <em>The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century<\/em>. Manchester: University of Manchester Press. pp. 171-173.<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>It shouldn't be necessary to stress that the author's mother is the most sympathetic figure in the book, functioning as its moral and emotional centre, but there's no harm in emphasising the point.<\/p>\n<p>This is a beautifully written work, benefiting from syntax that's economical but nonetheless rhythmically deliberate, achieving a perfect balance between austerity and lyricism. Especially effective is the understated way in which Roberts allows moral revelation to arise indirectly, rather than through overt commentary. And it's very funny, the most I've laughed reading a book in a while.<\/p>","css":"","js":"","created":"2025-10-23 15:46:50","updated":"2025-12-01 21:58:06","author":"1","category":"5","status":"published","comments":"0"}},{"data":{"id":"4","title":"First Impressions: great aunt Barbara on green asparagus, cricket and Englishmen","slug":"great-aunt-barbara-barbel-on-green-asparagus-cricket-and-englishmen","description":"My great-aunt Barbara (B\u00e4rbel) was 16 when she wrote this piece and would have recently begun her studies at Stamford High School, following her escape from Nazi Germany via Kindertransport in May 1939. Her and my 14-year-old grandfather arrived at Harwich on 18 May 1939, having travelled from Breslau, presumably via Berlin and the Hook of Holland. They stayed a few days at the Butlin's holiday ca\u2026","markdown":"<figure class=\"w-70 portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Stamford High School Old Girls Guild Magazine 2013-14.jpg\" alt=\"Stamford High School Old Girls Guild Magazine 2013-14\">\n\t<figcaption>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/stamfordschools.org.uk\/images\/Community\/Publications\/OGG\/2013-14.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Stamford High School Old Girls' Guild Magazine 2013-14<\/a> (p. 48)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n<blockquote class=\"line indent\">\n\t<p>May 1939. England, and walking in a busy street having the traffic on the left hand side! Seeing double-decker trams! Playing tennis on grass courts! Listening to films in a foreign language! Recognizing the freedom of the boys in a big English Public School! These were the first things I saw and every day something new and different.<\/p>\n\t<p>When Germans think of an Englishman they usually think of somebody in a very dirty mackintosh and a felt hat, smoking a pipe and of course carrying an umbrella. This idea I had too when I first came to England. In Harwich as in London, I saw hardly any \"real\" Englishmen at all. They all looked very much like Germans. On my first day in Bath I saw two gentlemen dressed as I thought all Englishmen were dressed. But when they came nearer I hardly believed my ears when I heard them talking German! I was so very disappointed that I gave up looking out for \"real\" Englishmen. Once I heard somebody saying that the Englishman's home is his castle. Well, I can quite understand that he likes being at home when there is a nice cup of tea for him, and a fire in the drawing room. At\nfirst I laughed when I saw people drinking tea five times a day. Now I have got quite used to a cup of tea in the morning and afternoon, but I still can't understand people who drink more than that. Food was very difficult too at first. I was very surprised when I had to eat green asparagus! And certainly I missed and miss the hundred kinds of German sausages.<\/p>\n\t<p>Quite a new idea was that so many houses had a garden. Everybody I met boasted how many roses were blooming in his garden just now, how many had to come yet and what kind they were.<\/p>\n\t<p>And then cricket!! In May the season was just beginning. Wherever I went I heard people discussing cricket. After about a week of being in England I had to go and watch a match of this wonderful game of cricket. I must confess that I thought it was terribly boring and everybody was shocked about it. There are some people who say that cricket shows the Englishman's character, and who doesn't understand cricket doesn't understand an Englishman. So next year I will have to study cricket very carefully, and till then I won't be able to understand any Englishman.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\nMy great-aunt Barbara (B\u00e4rbel) was 16 when she wrote this piece and would have recently begun her studies at Stamford High School, following her escape from Nazi Germany via Kindertransport in May 1939.\n\nHer and my 14-year-old grandfather arrived at Harwich on 18 May 1939, having travelled from Breslau, presumably via Berlin and the Hook of Holland. They stayed a few days at the Butlin's holiday camp at Dovercourt Bay before being separated, against their parents' wishes. My grandfather went on to Bath and Barbara to Uppingham in Leicestershire, where she lived with the Reverend Rupert Davies and his wife Margaret.\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/The Story of the Twin Boards.jpg\" alt=\"Barbara Kornicker with Davies family\">\n\t<figcaption>Barbara Kornicker (left)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/The Story of the Twin Boards (2).jpg\" alt=\"Barbara Kornicker at cricket field\">\n\t<figcaption>Barbara Kornicker (front\/centre)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nBarbara was baptised in 1940, aged 17. Her parents, Georg and Else, were still alive at this time and living precariously in Breslau.\n\nSince learning she was baptised soon after arriving in England, I've often wondered whether she was pressured to convert, and whether she felt she could write to her parents to let them know.\n\nMy father describes my grandfather as having been a devout atheist.\n\nTheir half-brother Peter attended a Hachshara at Werkdorp Wieringermeer, Netherlands. He underwent Ha'apala in 1939, reaching Palestine on the <a href=\"https:\/\/danielabraham.net\/tree\/related\/dora\/\" target=\"_blank\">notorious \u201cDeath Ship\u201d Dora<\/a>.","html":"<figure class=\"w-70 portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Stamford High School Old Girls Guild Magazine 2013-14.jpg\" alt=\"Stamford High School Old Girls Guild Magazine 2013-14\">\n    <figcaption>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/stamfordschools.org.uk\/images\/Community\/Publications\/OGG\/2013-14.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Stamford High School Old Girls' Guild Magazine 2013-14<\/a> (p. 48)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<blockquote class=\"line indent\">\n    <p>May 1939. England, and walking in a busy street having the traffic on the left hand side! Seeing double-decker trams! Playing tennis on grass courts! Listening to films in a foreign language! Recognizing the freedom of the boys in a big English Public School! These were the first things I saw and every day something new and different.<\/p>\n    <p>When Germans think of an Englishman they usually think of somebody in a very dirty mackintosh and a felt hat, smoking a pipe and of course carrying an umbrella. This idea I had too when I first came to England. In Harwich as in London, I saw hardly any \"real\" Englishmen at all. They all looked very much like Germans. On my first day in Bath I saw two gentlemen dressed as I thought all Englishmen were dressed. But when they came nearer I hardly believed my ears when I heard them talking German! I was so very disappointed that I gave up looking out for \"real\" Englishmen. Once I heard somebody saying that the Englishman's home is his castle. Well, I can quite understand that he likes being at home when there is a nice cup of tea for him, and a fire in the drawing room. At\nfirst I laughed when I saw people drinking tea five times a day. Now I have got quite used to a cup of tea in the morning and afternoon, but I still can't understand people who drink more than that. Food was very difficult too at first. I was very surprised when I had to eat green asparagus! And certainly I missed and miss the hundred kinds of German sausages.<\/p>\n    <p>Quite a new idea was that so many houses had a garden. Everybody I met boasted how many roses were blooming in his garden just now, how many had to come yet and what kind they were.<\/p>\n    <p>And then cricket!! In May the season was just beginning. Wherever I went I heard people discussing cricket. After about a week of being in England I had to go and watch a match of this wonderful game of cricket. I must confess that I thought it was terribly boring and everybody was shocked about it. There are some people who say that cricket shows the Englishman's character, and who doesn't understand cricket doesn't understand an Englishman. So next year I will have to study cricket very carefully, and till then I won't be able to understand any Englishman.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>My great-aunt Barbara (B\u00e4rbel) was 16 when she wrote this piece and would have recently begun her studies at Stamford High School, following her escape from Nazi Germany via Kindertransport in May 1939.<\/p>\n<p>Her and my 14-year-old grandfather arrived at Harwich on 18 May 1939, having travelled from Breslau, presumably via Berlin and the Hook of Holland. They stayed a few days at the Butlin's holiday camp at Dovercourt Bay before being separated, against their parents' wishes. My grandfather went on to Bath and Barbara to Uppingham in Leicestershire, where she lived with the Reverend Rupert Davies and his wife Margaret.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/The Story of the Twin Boards.jpg\" alt=\"Barbara Kornicker with Davies family\">\n    <figcaption>Barbara Kornicker (left)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/The Story of the Twin Boards (2).jpg\" alt=\"Barbara Kornicker at cricket field\">\n    <figcaption>Barbara Kornicker (front\/centre)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Barbara was baptised in 1940, aged 17. Her parents, Georg and Else, were still alive at this time and living precariously in Breslau.<\/p>\n<p>Since learning she was baptised soon after arriving in England, I've often wondered whether she was pressured to convert, and whether she felt she could write to her parents to let them know.<\/p>\n<p>My father describes my grandfather as having been a devout atheist.<\/p>\n<p>Their half-brother Peter attended a Hachshara at Werkdorp Wieringermeer, Netherlands. He underwent Ha'apala in 1939, reaching Palestine on the <a href=\"https:\/\/danielabraham.net\/tree\/related\/dora\/\" target=\"_blank\">notorious \u201cDeath Ship\u201d Dora<\/a>.<\/p>","css":"","js":"","created":"2025-10-09 19:08:32","updated":"2025-12-02 21:30:00","author":"1","category":"5","status":"published","comments":"0"}},{"data":{"id":"12","title":"Wzg\u00f3rza z gruzu: the rubble hills of post-war Wroc\u0142aw","slug":"wzgorza-z-gruzu-the-rubble-hills-of-post-war-wroclaw","description":"Just off \u015al\u0119\u017cna in Wroc\u0142aw, between the University of Economics and Aquapark, is a strange topographical feature that rises 140 metres above sea level in a city that's otherwise very flat. Wzg\u00f3rze Andersa is laid out in four tiers, has a kind of parkour gym near the bottom, a pump track at the top, and when you get up close you can tell that the entire hill is formed of millions of broken bricks. I\u2026","markdown":"Just off \u015al\u0119\u017cna in Wroc\u0142aw, between the University of Economics and Aquapark, is a strange topographical feature that rises 140 metres above sea level in a city that's otherwise very flat. Wzg\u00f3rze Andersa is laid out in four tiers, has a kind of parkour gym near the bottom, a pump track at the top, and when you get up close you can tell that the entire hill is formed of millions of broken bricks.\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Wroc\u0142aw - Wzg\u00f3rze Andersa.jpg\" alt=\"Wzg\u00f3rze Andersa from \u015al\u0119\u017cna\/Kamienna\">\n\t<figcaption>Wzg\u00f3rze Andersa from the \u015al\u0119\u017cna\/Kamienna intersection<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Wroc\u0142aw - Wzg\u00f3rze Andersa (2).jpg\" alt=\"Wzg\u00f3rze Andersa\">\n<\/figure>\n\nIf you understand anything of the history of Wroc\u0142aw it won't take you long to figure out how the bricks got there. It's been estimated that Breslau, as Wroc\u0142aw was known during Prussian and German rule, had been reduced to almost 18 million cubic metres of rubble by May 1945, the result of several months of aerial and artillery bombardment followed by intense street fighting. 70% of the city was damaged, and entire streets in what's now the Grunwaldzki district were demolished to build an airstrip intended to supply the city during the impending Siege of Breslau. Only a couple of aircraft ever landed there as the Soviet Air Forces quickly achieved air superiority.\n\nIn order to reconstruct the city, vast quantities of rubble and unsalvageable building materials had to be disposed of, with some being used to form huge artificial hills in the worst-damaged districts south of the river. The rubble hill in the Gaj district (Wzg\u00f3rze Gajowe) appears to be the biggest in the city, according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/gis.um.wroc.pl\/imap\/?gpmap=hipsometria&locale=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">hypsometric map<\/a> on the Spatial Information System of Wroc\u0142aw Municipality website. However, it's worth bearing in mind that these hills are easily confused with city defenses (including bastions) and landfill sites (Wzg\u00f3rza Ma\u015blickie i Gajowickie).\n\n<figure class=\"w-70\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Wroc\u0142aw - Wzg\u00f3rze Andersa (3).jpg\" alt=\"Wzg\u00f3rze Andersa pump track\">\n\t<figcaption>Pump track at the summit of Wzg\u00f3rze Andersa<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nThe hill off \u015al\u0119\u017cna is located just a few city blocks from Charlottenstra\u00dfe\/ul. Krucza, where my grandfather and his family lived in a <a href=\"\/text\/installing-stolpersteine-at-charlottenstrasse-22\">tenement building<\/a> devastated during the Battle of Breslau and subsequently demolished after the war. I'm confident that many of the bricks used to construct Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 are somewhere in the midst of that huge pile.\n\n<figure class=\"w-70\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Gorazdowska, K - Krucza (1945).jpg\" alt=\"Destruction along Charlottenstra\u00dfe, Wroc\u0142aw, 1945\">\n\t<figcaption>Destroyed tenement buildings on Charlottenstra\u00dfe, 1945. Attribution: Gorazdowska, K.<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nIt's also likely that some of the bricks made their way to Warsaw, as part of the \"Bricks for Warsaw\" programme that compelled battle-scarred western Polish cities to give up their salvageable building materials so they could be used to help reconstruct buildings in the capital. Wroc\u0142aw, for example, was instructed to supply 150 million bricks a year, with citizens mobilised to contribute to the cause and organised into labour brigades. Warsaw's famous Barbican was reconstructed almost entirely from bricks transported from Wroc\u0142aw and Nysa. Buildings that were ultimately repairable were razed, and even buildings that had already been repaired and were habitable. Entire streets of barely damaged buildings in Szczecin were levelled in order to satisfy Warsaw's thirst for bricks.\n\n<figure class=\"w-70\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Faryaszewska, E - Warsaw (1944).jpg\" alt=\"Warsaw in 1944, during the August Uprising\">\n\t<figcaption>Warsaw during the August Uprising, 1944. Shot on Agfacolor (not colourised). Attribution: <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Warsaw_1944.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ewa Faryaszewska<\/a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure class=\"w-80\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Warsawa - Stare Miasto.jpg\" alt=\"Old Town, Warsaw\">\n\t<figcaption>Warsaw's Old Town (Stare Miasto). Attribution: Sadowski, B.<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nWarsaw's old town never looked so good, but you have to wonder to what extent this effort diminished the cultural and architectural heritage of the rest of the country.\n\nI've included photographs in this post by Krystyna Gorazdowska and Ewa Faryaszewska, two remarkable photographers who made work during the Second World War and whose stories remain little known outside Poland. In the future I'll be publishing short profiles of their lives and work, and to introduce a regular series here devoted to lesser-known photographers whose work I find compelling, or who, despite their relative obscurity, have exerted some influence on historical photographic practice.","html":"<p>Just off \u015al\u0119\u017cna in Wroc\u0142aw, between the University of Economics and Aquapark, is a strange topographical feature that rises 140 metres above sea level in a city that's otherwise very flat. Wzg\u00f3rze Andersa is laid out in four tiers, has a kind of parkour gym near the bottom, a pump track at the top, and when you get up close you can tell that the entire hill is formed of millions of broken bricks.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Wroc\u0142aw - Wzg\u00f3rze Andersa.jpg\" alt=\"Wzg\u00f3rze Andersa from \u015al\u0119\u017cna\/Kamienna\">\n    <figcaption>Wzg\u00f3rze Andersa from the \u015al\u0119\u017cna\/Kamienna intersection<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<figure class=\"portrait\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Wroc\u0142aw - Wzg\u00f3rze Andersa (2).jpg\" alt=\"Wzg\u00f3rze Andersa\">\n<\/figure>\n<p>If you understand anything of the history of Wroc\u0142aw it won't take you long to figure out how the bricks got there. It's been estimated that Breslau, as Wroc\u0142aw was known during Prussian and German rule, had been reduced to almost 18 million cubic metres of rubble by May 1945, the result of several months of aerial and artillery bombardment followed by intense street fighting. 70% of the city was damaged, and entire streets in what's now the Grunwaldzki district were demolished to build an airstrip intended to supply the city during the impending Siege of Breslau. Only a couple of aircraft ever landed there as the Soviet Air Forces quickly achieved air superiority.<\/p>\n<p>In order to reconstruct the city, vast quantities of rubble and unsalvageable building materials had to be disposed of, with some being used to form huge artificial hills in the worst-damaged districts south of the river. The rubble hill in the Gaj district (Wzg\u00f3rze Gajowe) appears to be the biggest in the city, according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/gis.um.wroc.pl\/imap\/?gpmap=hipsometria&locale=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">hypsometric map<\/a> on the Spatial Information System of Wroc\u0142aw Municipality website. However, it's worth bearing in mind that these hills are easily confused with city defenses (including bastions) and landfill sites (Wzg\u00f3rza Ma\u015blickie i Gajowickie).<\/p>\n<figure class=\"w-70\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Wroc\u0142aw - Wzg\u00f3rze Andersa (3).jpg\" alt=\"Wzg\u00f3rze Andersa pump track\">\n    <figcaption>Pump track at the summit of Wzg\u00f3rze Andersa<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>The hill off \u015al\u0119\u017cna is located just a few city blocks from Charlottenstra\u00dfe\/ul. Krucza, where my grandfather and his family lived in a <a href=\"\/text\/installing-stolpersteine-at-charlottenstrasse-22\">tenement building<\/a> devastated during the Battle of Breslau and subsequently demolished after the war. I'm confident that many of the bricks used to construct Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 are somewhere in the midst of that huge pile.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"w-70\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Gorazdowska, K - Krucza (1945).jpg\" alt=\"Destruction along Charlottenstra\u00dfe, Wroc\u0142aw, 1945\">\n    <figcaption>Destroyed tenement buildings on Charlottenstra\u00dfe, 1945. Attribution: Gorazdowska, K.<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>It's also likely that some of the bricks made their way to Warsaw, as part of the &quot;Bricks for Warsaw&quot; programme that compelled battle-scarred western Polish cities to give up their salvageable building materials so they could be used to help reconstruct buildings in the capital. Wroc\u0142aw, for example, was instructed to supply 150 million bricks a year, with citizens mobilised to contribute to the cause and organised into labour brigades. Warsaw's famous Barbican was reconstructed almost entirely from bricks transported from Wroc\u0142aw and Nysa. Buildings that were ultimately repairable were razed, and even buildings that had already been repaired and were habitable. Entire streets of barely damaged buildings in Szczecin were levelled in order to satisfy Warsaw's thirst for bricks.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"w-70\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Faryaszewska, E - Warsaw (1944).jpg\" alt=\"Warsaw in 1944, during the August Uprising\">\n    <figcaption>Warsaw during the August Uprising, 1944. Shot on Agfacolor (not colourised). Attribution: <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Warsaw_1944.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ewa Faryaszewska<\/a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<figure class=\"w-80\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Warsawa - Stare Miasto.jpg\" alt=\"Old Town, Warsaw\">\n    <figcaption>Warsaw's Old Town (Stare Miasto). Attribution: Sadowski, B.<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Warsaw's old town never looked so good, but you have to wonder to what extent this effort diminished the cultural and architectural heritage of the rest of the country.<\/p>\n<p>I've included photographs in this post by Krystyna Gorazdowska and Ewa Faryaszewska, two remarkable photographers who made work during the Second World War and whose stories remain little known outside Poland. In the future I'll be publishing short profiles of their lives and work, and to introduce a regular series here devoted to lesser-known photographers whose work I find compelling, or who, despite their relative obscurity, have exerted some influence on historical photographic practice.<\/p>","css":"","js":"","created":"2025-09-13 10:30:44","updated":"2026-01-06 14:27:30","author":"1","category":"5","status":"published","comments":"0"}},{"data":{"id":"11","title":"Installing Stolpersteine at Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22","slug":"installing-stolpersteine-at-charlottenstrasse-22","description":"The development of a body of photographic work is an aside to my main priority: the installation of Stolpersteine in Wroc\u0142aw in memory of my great-grandparents, Georg and Else Kornicker, who were murdered at Auschwitz in 1943. In order to install Stolpersteine, it's necessary to precisely identify\u2014on a contemporary street plan\u2014the entrance to the building where Georg and Else lived prior to <em>Enteig<\/em>\u2026","markdown":"The development of a body of photographic work is an aside to my main priority: the installation of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.stolpersteine.eu\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Stolpersteine<\/a> in Wroc\u0142aw in memory of my great-grandparents, Georg and Else Kornicker, who were murdered at Auschwitz in 1943.\n\nIn order to install Stolpersteine, it's necessary to precisely identify\u2014on a contemporary street plan\u2014the entrance to the building where Georg and Else lived prior to <em>Enteignung<\/em>, as this is where the stones would typically be installed. Unfortunately, Georg and Else's tenement building at Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 was located in a suburb southwest of Breslau's old town, right in the path of the main thrust of the Soviet attack beginning in February 1945. This area of the city was subject to heavy artillery and aerial bombardment, as well as months of intense fighting between Red Army and German Army infantry and tanks. Their entire street and most of the surrounding streets were damaged beyond repair, with very few examples of pre-war architecture remaining in the southwestern districts of modern Wroc\u0142aw.\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Gorazdowska, K - Krucza (1945).jpg\" alt=\"Entrance to Krucza and Szcz\u0119\u015bliwa from Powsta\u0144c\u00f3w \u015al\u0105skich\">\n\t<figcaption>Charlottenstra\u00dfe\/ul. Krucza with the Church of St. Charles Borromeo in the distance, 1945. Attribution: Gorazdowska, K.<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nOne building that does remain is the former Landesversicherungsanstalt (insurance institution), now an oncology centre, with a flat roof having replaced the pre-war pitched roof and ornate tower.\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Landesversicherungsanstalt Schlesien.jpg\" alt=\"Landesversicherungsanstalt Schlesien\">\n\t<figcaption>Landesversicherungsanstalt Schlesien, c. 1900-1909<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nAfter the eventual fall of Breslau and its return to Polish rule following the Potsdam Conference, the city's name reverted to Wroc\u0142aw, and Charlottenstra\u00dfe became ul. Krucza (Raven). If the modern-day street numbering tracks with the pre-war numbering, Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 is some way along ul. Krucza, towards the neo-Romanesque Church of St. Charles Borromeo. But nothing's ever that simple.\n\nI was able to visit the <a href=\"https:\/\/ma.wroc.pl\/en\/construction-archive\/about-archive\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Wroc\u0142aw Construction Archive<\/a> today, with the help of Karolina Jara, a friend who spent many hours here carrying out research for her PhD thesis and knows her way around. What we found in the archive was well beyond my expectations. Inside an old leather folio were detailed site plans, floor plans and beautifully drawn building elevations.\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Charlottenstrasse 22 - drawings.jpg\" alt=\"Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 drawings from 1892, including elevation\">\n\t<figcaption>Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 drawings from 1892, including elevation<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nOne site plan showed workings out, where it appears a decision was made to reorient the street and reposition the building. At the time of construction there were allotments and open fields in this area of the city, so the planners were presumably unconstrained by existing street layouts or earlier construction.\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Charlottenstrasse 22 - plan.jpg\" alt=\"Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 site plan from 1892\">\n\t<figcaption>Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 site plan with workings out, from 1892<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Charlottenstrasse 22 - roof detail.jpg\" alt=\"Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 roof detail from 1892 elevation\">\n\t<figcaption>Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 roof detail from 1892 drawing of elevation (neither bird detail nor pole included in the final construction)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n<figure>\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Charlottenstrasse 22 - plumbing.jpg\" alt=\"Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 plumbing cross section from 1892\">\n\t<figcaption>With this cross section you can imagine everyone enjoying their bath simultaneously, if that's the sort of thing you're into<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nWe soon realised that the modern-day street numbering and even the position of the street bear little relation to what existed in 1939 when my grandfather lived in this building. I had a hunch\u2014thanks to an old map in a book I randomly came across in an Airbnb apartment\u2014that Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 might actually have been right on the corner of Charlottenstra\u00dfe and Kronprinzenstra\u00dfe, placing the building beneath the current footprint of <a href=\"https:\/\/skytower.pl\/en\/o-skytower\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sky Tower<\/a>, the fifth tallest building in Poland. My hunch was confirmed by comparing the location of the Landesversicherungsanstalt on a 1938 plan with the location of the oncology hospital on a modern map.\n\nThis is bad, and good, with the emphasis on bad. We now need to seek permission for the install not only from the city, but also the landowner. The installation of Stolpersteine continues to be a political issue in Poland and it's not clear what the landowner's position is likely to be.\n\nIf I were to take something positive from this, it's that the stones will (hopefully) be installed in a highly visible area of Wroc\u0142aw where their presence may speak to more people, increasing their capacity to inform future generations.\n\nSky Tower is a building that divides opinion in Wroc\u0142aw, but even before I was sure the foundations of Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 lie directly underneath it, I saw the tower as a sort of beacon that brought to mind my family whenever I saw it on the horizon. As I often make pictures in the shadow of Sky Tower it also acts as a convenient landmark, as there's no need to consult a map when trying to find my way there.\n\n<figure class=\"w-90\">\n\t<img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Charlottenstrasse 22 - postcard.jpg\" alt=\"Postcard including Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22\">\n\t<figcaption>The clearest photograph of Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 I'm able to find (leftmost building in the frame)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nThank you to Karolina Jara at <a href=\"https:\/\/openheim.org\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">OP ENHEIM<\/a> and Wojtek Chrzanowski at <a href=\"http:\/\/chplus.pl\/en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ch+ architekci<\/a>, without whose help I doubt this install would have progressed beyond the frustration of dealing with the city authorities (and getting absolutely nowhere).","html":"<p>The development of a body of photographic work is an aside to my main priority: the installation of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.stolpersteine.eu\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Stolpersteine<\/a> in Wroc\u0142aw in memory of my great-grandparents, Georg and Else Kornicker, who were murdered at Auschwitz in 1943.<\/p>\n<p>In order to install Stolpersteine, it's necessary to precisely identify\u2014on a contemporary street plan\u2014the entrance to the building where Georg and Else lived prior to <em>Enteignung<\/em>, as this is where the stones would typically be installed. Unfortunately, Georg and Else's tenement building at Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 was located in a suburb southwest of Breslau's old town, right in the path of the main thrust of the Soviet attack beginning in February 1945. This area of the city was subject to heavy artillery and aerial bombardment, as well as months of intense fighting between Red Army and German Army infantry and tanks. Their entire street and most of the surrounding streets were damaged beyond repair, with very few examples of pre-war architecture remaining in the southwestern districts of modern Wroc\u0142aw.<\/p>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Gorazdowska, K - Krucza (1945).jpg\" alt=\"Entrance to Krucza and Szcz\u0119\u015bliwa from Powsta\u0144c\u00f3w \u015al\u0105skich\">\n    <figcaption>Charlottenstra\u00dfe\/ul. Krucza with the Church of St. Charles Borromeo in the distance, 1945. Attribution: Gorazdowska, K.<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>One building that does remain is the former Landesversicherungsanstalt (insurance institution), now an oncology centre, with a flat roof having replaced the pre-war pitched roof and ornate tower.<\/p>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Landesversicherungsanstalt Schlesien.jpg\" alt=\"Landesversicherungsanstalt Schlesien\">\n    <figcaption>Landesversicherungsanstalt Schlesien, c. 1900-1909<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>After the eventual fall of Breslau and its return to Polish rule following the Potsdam Conference, the city's name reverted to Wroc\u0142aw, and Charlottenstra\u00dfe became ul. Krucza (Raven). If the modern-day street numbering tracks with the pre-war numbering, Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 is some way along ul. Krucza, towards the neo-Romanesque Church of St. Charles Borromeo. But nothing's ever that simple.<\/p>\n<p>I was able to visit the <a href=\"https:\/\/ma.wroc.pl\/en\/construction-archive\/about-archive\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Wroc\u0142aw Construction Archive<\/a> today, with the help of Karolina Jara, a friend who spent many hours here carrying out research for her PhD thesis and knows her way around. What we found in the archive was well beyond my expectations. Inside an old leather folio were detailed site plans, floor plans and beautifully drawn building elevations.<\/p>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Charlottenstrasse 22 - drawings.jpg\" alt=\"Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 drawings from 1892, including elevation\">\n    <figcaption>Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 drawings from 1892, including elevation<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>One site plan showed workings out, where it appears a decision was made to reorient the street and reposition the building. At the time of construction there were allotments and open fields in this area of the city, so the planners were presumably unconstrained by existing street layouts or earlier construction.<\/p>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Charlottenstrasse 22 - plan.jpg\" alt=\"Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 site plan from 1892\">\n    <figcaption>Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 site plan with workings out, from 1892<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Charlottenstrasse 22 - roof detail.jpg\" alt=\"Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 roof detail from 1892 elevation\">\n    <figcaption>Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 roof detail from 1892 drawing of elevation (neither bird detail nor pole included in the final construction)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<figure>\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Charlottenstrasse 22 - plumbing.jpg\" alt=\"Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 plumbing cross section from 1892\">\n    <figcaption>With this cross section you can imagine everyone enjoying their bath simultaneously, if that's the sort of thing you're into<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>We soon realised that the modern-day street numbering and even the position of the street bear little relation to what existed in 1939 when my grandfather lived in this building. I had a hunch\u2014thanks to an old map in a book I randomly came across in an Airbnb apartment\u2014that Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 might actually have been right on the corner of Charlottenstra\u00dfe and Kronprinzenstra\u00dfe, placing the building beneath the current footprint of <a href=\"https:\/\/skytower.pl\/en\/o-skytower\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sky Tower<\/a>, the fifth tallest building in Poland. My hunch was confirmed by comparing the location of the Landesversicherungsanstalt on a 1938 plan with the location of the oncology hospital on a modern map.<\/p>\n<p>This is bad, and good, with the emphasis on bad. We now need to seek permission for the install not only from the city, but also the landowner. The installation of Stolpersteine continues to be a political issue in Poland and it's not clear what the landowner's position is likely to be.<\/p>\n<p>If I were to take something positive from this, it's that the stones will (hopefully) be installed in a highly visible area of Wroc\u0142aw where their presence may speak to more people, increasing their capacity to inform future generations.<\/p>\n<p>Sky Tower is a building that divides opinion in Wroc\u0142aw, but even before I was sure the foundations of Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 lie directly underneath it, I saw the tower as a sort of beacon that brought to mind my family whenever I saw it on the horizon. As I often make pictures in the shadow of Sky Tower it also acts as a convenient landmark, as there's no need to consult a map when trying to find my way there.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"w-90\">\n    <img src=\"https:\/\/adamkingston.com\/themes\/antonis\/files\/weltschmerz\/Charlottenstrasse 22 - postcard.jpg\" alt=\"Postcard including Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22\">\n    <figcaption>The clearest photograph of Charlottenstra\u00dfe 22 I'm able to find (leftmost building in the frame)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Thank you to Karolina Jara at <a href=\"https:\/\/openheim.org\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">OP ENHEIM<\/a> and Wojtek Chrzanowski at <a href=\"http:\/\/chplus.pl\/en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ch+ architekci<\/a>, without whose help I doubt this install would have progressed beyond the frustration of dealing with the city authorities (and getting absolutely nowhere).<\/p>","css":"","js":"","created":"2025-09-08 20:16:57","updated":"2025-12-17 16:22:25","author":"1","category":"5","status":"published","comments":"0"}}]}