24 June 2026
Before leaving for Poland, I imagined that I would experience Kraków through the eyes of Caterina Sanseverino, Queen Bona Sforza's lady of the chamber in P.K. Adams' Silent Waters. I expected to find myself comparing streets, churches, and buildings to the world she inhabited.
Instead, something unexpected happened.
Once I arrived, I wasn't seeing Kraków through Caterina's eyes—or anyone else's. I was seeing it through my own. The city ceased to be the setting of a historical novel and became a living place, filled with people, faith, history, and beauty. It was no longer someone else's story. It had stepped into my own.
Stepping foot in Poland for the first time—the land of my ancestors—was unlike anything I had expected. It wasn't simply that I was visiting another country. I found myself immersed in the language, the landscape, the history, the food, and the rhythm of daily life that had shaped generations of my family.
For years I have known my ancestors through records, photographs, and stories. This was different. I was experiencing the world that had shaped their lives.
It is difficult to describe the feeling. I often found myself pausing, simply taking in where I was. For the first time, I began to understand, in a very small way, the deep connection that many cultures have with the land of their ancestors. Poland was no longer just the place where my family once lived. It was the world that had formed them.
We spent about a week and a half in Kraków. It is a beautiful city—amazingly clean, rich in history, and filled with churches. I've been trying to learn some Polish, although I haven't progressed much beyond basic greetings (I can read a bit more than I can speak).
From the moment we arrived, however, what impressed me most was not the city itself, but its people.
I cannot thank my host, friend, and colleague, Maciej Thomas, enough. We stayed in his lovely flat, which he had thoughtfully stocked with wonderful Polish food. More importantly, he welcomed us into his city and his community. He introduced us to shopkeepers and restaurant owners who greeted us warmly throughout the week. They offered us not only food and drink, but also smiles, conversation, and genuine hospitality.
As a pilgrim arriving in Poland for the first time, I found that deeply moving. I was welcomed by people who owed me nothing and yet showed me extraordinary kindness. In those moments, I felt less like a tourist and more like a someone returning to home.
One of the first things I noticed about Kraków was its churches. They are everywhere, and nearly all of them are open from about 7 AM until 7 PM. Priests, nuns, and monks are a common sight as well. (And, of course, there are almost as many Żabka shops.)
As the days passed, I realized that I wasn't simply visiting a city with many churches. I was immersed in a culture where faith remains a visible part of everyday life. The churches were open. People stopped in to pray. Clergy and religious sisters were a very visible part of the fabric of the city. That immersion stirred something within me that I hadn't expected.
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| Wawel Cathedral, Kraków |
I was raised Catholic. I taught Sunday School, and at one point even contemplated entering the Benedictine order. In recent years, however, I have drifted away from the Church. I have struggled with many of its decisions and actions, from the exclusion of women from Holy Orders to the Church's handling of clergy sexual abuse and its role in stripping Indigenous children of their cultural heritage.
Yet while in Kraków, I felt called to attend Mass.
I spoke with my mom before leaving for church, and she encouraged me to go. So I attended Mass at the Basilica of St. Michael the Archangel.
I had previously attended Mass in German and Italian and could follow along reasonably well. Polish was much more challenging. Fortunately, I was able to pull up the Order of the Mass and the daily readings on my phone. As it turned out, I had chosen to attend on the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.
The readings focused on God's love for humanity and the comfort found in Christ's gentle and loving heart. The psalm spoke of God's compassion and mercy. The second reading proclaimed that "God is love" and called believers to share that love with one another. In the Gospel, Jesus invited those who were weary and burdened to come to Him, promising rest and asking them to learn from His gentleness and humility.
While I continue to struggle with aspects of the Catholic faith, I find myself returning again and again to a simple belief: God is Divine Love, and we are called to reflect that love in the world. Sitting in that church in Kraków, listening to words I could barely understand, I found myself wondering what that really means. How do we express that love? Is it found in grand acts of heroism, or in small acts of kindness? Is it welcoming a stranger, helping someone in need, preserving the memory of those who came before us, or standing up for those who are vulnerable?
As the trip unfolded, I found myself returning to those questions again and again.
We visited the Oskar Schindler Factory Museum, which was deeply moving. It tells the story of Kraków's Jews during the Nazi occupation and brings home the human cost of that period in a very personal way.
What affected me most was learning how the Nazis systematically destroyed Jewish cemeteries, tearing up gravestones and grinding them into road material. They valued neither the living nor the dead. Their goal was not simply to exterminate a people, but to erase their memory as well.
As someone who spends so much time searching for traces of the past and trying to recover family stories, I found that especially heartbreaking. It made me think about the lives behind those lost stones—not only those who were murdered, but also those who endured occupation, deportation, camps, death marches, and unimaginable hardship.
I also found myself thinking about those who chose to resist the occupation. The museum tells the story of Tadeusz Pankiewicz, the pharmacist who continued operating his pharmacy inside the Kraków Ghetto and used it to provide aid to Jews confined there. He was only one of many.
Throughout the occupation, ordinary people faced impossible choices. Some collaborated. Some looked away. Others risked their own lives and those of their families to hide neighbors, forge documents, carry messages, or provide food and medicine to those being hunted. They chose compassion over fear, courage over self-preservation, and humanity over hatred.
The stories preserved in the museum are a reminder of the evil that human beings are capable of. But they are also a reminder that even in the darkest times, there were people who chose a different path. As I continued to reflect on the readings from the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, I could not help but see those acts as expressions of Divine Love in a world desperately in need of it.
My husband and I chose not to visit Auschwitz. It has become such a major
tourist destination that it no longer felt like the right experience for
us. Instead, we visited the Wieliczka Salt Mine.
We descended nearly 800 wooden steps into a vast underground world carved almost entirely by hand over the course of centuries. Armed with little more than picks, axes, determination, and remarkable ingenuity, generations of miners created hundreds of miles of tunnels, chambers, chapels, and shafts beneath the earth. The deepest point of our tour was about 440 feet below the surface, yet the roughly 2.2 miles that we walked represent less than one percent of the mine's passageways.
Standing there, it was difficult to comprehend the scale of what generations of human hands had accomplished.
Walking through the mine, my mind churned up so many questions: Who dug these tunnels? How many hours did they spend underground? How many injuries were there? How many fathers, sons, and brothers spent their lives extracting the salt? How many never lived long enough to enjoy the wealth it created?
What struck me were the shrines and chapels built by the miners themselves. Deep underground, in the darkness, they carved places of worship from the very salt surrounding them. As the mine expanded, some of these shrines were moved and rebuilt in new locations. They were reminders that these workers were more than just laborers. They were people with families, fears, hopes, and faith. They sought comfort, protection, and meaning in lives that were difficult and often dangerous.
Much of that beauty was made possible by the labor of workers such as these. From that point on, every church we entered seemed different. I found myself admiring not only the beauty before me, but also thinking about the generations of miners.
As we emerged from the mine and in subsequent days, my thoughts often drifted to the present. We admire the devices in our pockets, the buildings we inhabit, and the conveniences of modern life, but how often do we stop to think about the people whose labor makes them possible? The workers in fields, factories, and mines around the world. The men, women, and sometimes even children who extract the minerals used in our phones and other electronics.
Like the miners of Wieliczka, much of their labor remains invisible to those of us who benefit from it. The mine reminded me that behind almost everything we value are human beings whose stories are rarely told.
One afternoon, Simon and I visited the Underground Museum beneath Kraków's Main Square. I expected a museum that would tell the history of Kraków through artifacts and exhibits. I did not expect to descend beneath the modern city and find myself walking through the remains of the medieval marketplace itself.
As I wandered through the excavated streets, my attention kept drifting away from the artifacts and toward the people who had once lived there. I found myself imagining merchants and villagers buying and selling goods, the blacksmith working long hours at his forge, and families struggling to earn a living in homes no larger than a single room. A video recreated one of the great fires that swept through the city, while charred timbers recovered from the excavation lay nearby. They were more than burned logs. They represented homes destroyed, livelihoods lost, and lives forever changed.
Once again, I found myself looking beyond the objects to the people behind them.
One evening, after a long day traveling by train to Zakopane and riding the cable car into the mountains, we returned to Kraków exhausted and hungry. As we walked down Skawińska Street toward Maciej's flat, we noticed an elderly man carrying several bags. He looked confused and was walking in the middle of the street. A car had to swerve to avoid him.
He eventually made his way to the opposite sidewalk. We stopped and watched, unsure what to do. The priest clearly needed help, but how could we help if he spoke only Polish—or another language we didn't know?
After a moment, I decided we had to try.
I walked over and, in my best—but still very imperfect—Polish, asked, "Mówisz po angielsku?"
He looked at me, smiled, and replied in English that he had spent the afternoon visiting one of Kraków's basilicas but had become disoriented and could no longer remember how to get back to the hostel where he was staying.
He told us he was nearly ninety years old—almost exactly my mother's age—and had come from Belgium to attend a conference. Somewhere during the afternoon he had lost his bearings. Standing there with his bags in hand, he knew neither where he was nor how to find his way home. I had no idea which church he was looking for and as it was late, I thought the best thing would be to get him back to the hostel.
I opened Google Maps and found the address of his hostel. It was more than a mile away. There was no way I could simply point him in the right direction and hope he found it.
"I'll call an Uber," I said.
He immediately protested. "No, no... you don't need to do that."
But I couldn't just leave him.
A few minutes later the driver arrived. After I explained the situation, he looked at the priest, then back at me, and admitted he would feel more comfortable if I came along. So I helped the priest into the car, climbed in beside him, and we began the short ride across Kraków.
During the drive he thanked me over and over again. He promised that he would celebrate Mass for my mother and me. We talked about his life. He had come from Belgium, had attended the same seminary as Pope Leo, spoke four languages, and yet told me he still preferred to pray in Latin. He said my name was Good Samaritan. I admitted to struggling with my faith but that I saw God as Divine Love.
When we arrived at the hostel, I thought our adventure was over.
It wasn't.
The front door was locked, and he couldn't remember the entry code.
He tried several combinations without success. I called the telephone number posted beside the entrance, but all I got was an automated recording—most likely because I hadn't entered the country code correctly. For a moment I wondered what we were going to do.
Then I noticed another number labeled "Reception" on the keypad beside the door. I entered it into the keypad.
Click.
The door unlocked.
I made sure he was ok to enter on his own, which he said he was. Only then did I feel comfortable leaving him.
I walked back to the tram stop—the very one where Simon and I had been standing about an hour earlier—and made my way back to Skawińska Street.
Simon and I never did learn his name. To us, he simply became "Father Belgian."
I wish I could say that I returned to Maciej's flat feeling content that I had done a good deed. I didn't.
Instead, I spent much of the night awake, turning the encounter over and over in my mind.
Had I done enough? Should I have invited him back to the flat for a meal and a glass of water before taking him to the hostel? Would that have embarrassed him? Had I helped because he was a priest and, subconsciously, I saw him as someone who was safe to approach? Earlier that day I had quietly stepped away from an older woman who appeared to be homeless because I felt uncomfortable and uncertain. Why had one encounter felt so different from the other?
Would Father Belgian make it safely back to Belgium? Would someone be there to meet him? Why hadn't I asked his name? He had asked for mine.
The questions have stayed with me.
As I continued to reflect on these questions over the following days, I also found myself noticing things I might otherwise have overlooked.
The song of a bird in the park.
A double rainbow stretching across the evening sky over Kraków.
The quiet beauty of the Jagiellonian University Botanical Garden.
The unexpected gift of wandering into a church and finding a free choral concert, part of an international competition taking place throughout the city.
Perhaps that, too, is part of what I had been hearing in the readings for the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart. If God is Divine Love, perhaps that love is revealed not only in extraordinary acts of courage, but also in simple acts of kindness, in beauty freely shared, and in the quiet moments that invite us to pause and pay attention.
I don't pretend to have found all the answers during my time in Kraków. If anything, I came home with more questions than I had when I left.
But perhaps that is what pilgrimage is meant to do.
NEW POST:
Warsaw was emotional in a very different way.
After North Wales and Kraków, we experienced a bit of culture shock arriving there. Warsaw is a modern city, filled with skyscrapers and new construction, but it seems to carry a cloak of sadness and tragedy. Throughout the city are memorials to those who died during the Warsaw Uprising. There are also many Soviet-era buildings, some of which were clearly not built to last.
While the visit to Kraków was immensely emotional, knowing that I was the first of Brygida's descendants to visit Poland, to walk on what felt like hallowed ground, visiting Warsaw was deeply personal. This was the region of my family.
Yet in a small way, this trip felt like the opposite of that destruction. Daniel and I have spent years piecing together fragments of our family's history from opposite sides of the ocean. By finding one another, sharing photographs and records, and visiting the places where our ancestors lived, we have connected memories that had been separated for generations. We cannot change the past, but we can help ensure that these lives are remembered.
We visited Praga and saw the place where Daniel Banasiak's great-grandfather, Zdzisław Kuliński, was killed during the Nazi occupation. He had been delivering bread from the countryside when he was stopped by the Nazis. He tried to run home but only made it to the alcove of his apartment building, where he was murdered. He left behind a twenty-year-old widow and two small children.
Standing there, I could not help wondering what might have happened had he reached his apartment. Would the Nazis have followed him home? Would his wife and children have been killed as well? There is no way to know. What we do know is that in that moment a young woman lost her husband, two small children lost their father, and the lives of an entire family were forever changed.
One thing that struck me in Warsaw was that most of the churches were closed to visitors. Large grates block the entrances, allowing you to look inside. In front of the grates are kneelers where people can stop and pray. I found this so very sad, especially later in Gostynin, where I would have liked to light candles for our ancestors.
Daniel, Simon, and I took the train from Warsaw to Gostynin. It's hard to explain the feeling of walking on the ground that your ancestors walked. As far as I know, I am the first person in my direct line to return to Poland since Brygida and Marianna left. Standing in Gostynin, I could not help wondering what they would have thought if they had known that one of their descendants would someday come back.
As we walked through the town, I couldn't help but think about all those who came before us. One of the most moving moments for me was standing in front of a house built in 1927 and realizing that Józefa and Leonard would almost certainly have seen it when it was new. They must have been living in Gostynin at the time, as they were married there in 1931, just a month after Adam Palczewski, Józefa's grandson, was married. They may have walked past that house on their way to church or while visiting family.
Brygida and Marianna almost certainly departed for America through the train station. They would have attended the church. Their lives, like the lives of so many in rural Poland, revolved around the church, the village, and their families. And yet, they chose to leave to create a better future for themselves and their descendants. I often think of the courage they garnered, to not only leave family, but to cross an ocean bound for New York in the early 1900s—a city that was dirty, dangerous, crowded, and completely foreign.
the families who left loved ones behind and sailed into the unknown, the immigrants who struggled to survive in the filthy and often dangerous streets of early twentieth-century cities, and those who remained
It is one thing to find names and dates in records; it is quite another to stand before something that would have been a central part of your ancestors' lives.
While in Gostynin, I found myself thinking not only about the people who left, but also about those who stayed behind, which included Marianna and Józef Palczewski's children, Adam and Wanda. Did Marianna and Józef expect to bring the two children to the US once they got settled, but then WW1 broke out? Some who stayed endured two world wars, the Nazi occupation, and decades of Soviet domination. Others boarded trains and ships bound for an unknown future, leaving family, language, and homeland behind. The choices they made shaped all of our lives.
Yet through this journey, searching for people whose stories were lost or in danger of being forgotten, I found myself surrounded by living families separated by an ocean and generations have found one another again, and will remain forever connected.
Daniel and I are now convinced that Brygida, Marianna, and Adam were full siblings and that Leonard Teodor was the father of all three, as well as Józefa's subsequent children. Karol presented only the first two children for baptism. We have been unable to locate death records for either Józefa or Leonard, and neither is buried in the Gostynin cemetery, although Adam Palczewski is. Daniel spoke with the clerk in Gostynin, who confirmed that there is no record of either Józefa or Leonard after 1931. There is also no death record for Karol.
The mystery remains unsolved, but the work continues. Some questions may never be answered.
Yet through this journey, families separated by an ocean and generations have found one another again, and will remain forever connected.
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