Mile bylam zaskoczona ze w Ottawskiej gazecie napisali o Lodzi i Polsce w bardzo pozytywny sposob:).
"No, Poland isn't the Promised Land, regardless of its breathless civic boosters. For the first time in memory, though, it is a land of promise.
Source: Ottawa Citizen (2008.07.17)
A land of promise
LODZ, Poland -- In the 19th century, Lodz became the seat of Czarist Poland's new textile industry. As demand for cotton grew everywhere, thousands of workers came here seeking work in was called "the Manchester of Central Europe."
The great Jewish-German industrialists not only built magnificent red-brick factories with artistic flourishes, they built opulent homes beside them. The air was as filthy as they were rich. These palaces gave new meaning to living above the store.
By the end of the century, Lodz was famously known as "the promised land." For many of those who came here in the Industrial Revolution, it surely was, though that didn't prevent them from striking for better working conditions.
When the textile industry died in the 1990s, as it did in the northeast United States decades earlier, the city reeled. Unemployment rose sharply.
In many ways, Lodz was a reflection of Poland as it tried to shed the legacy of communism. Like other countries, it had to compete with Asia's economic tigers.
In Lodz today, things are looking up. It is one of 14 special economic zones in Poland offering incentives ("the Promised Land for Investments") to attract money. Information technology and household equipment are two new industries that have helped create some 10,000 jobs.
Marek Cieslak, who runs the Lodz Special Economic Zone, enthuses about the city's advantages, from its universities to its rich cultural life. His sales pitch, however, is much the same as the one made by Wroclaw, in western Poland, and Krakow, in southern Poland, which has now overtaken Lodz as the country's second biggest city after Warsaw.
But Mr. Cieslak isn't wrong, either. His challenge -- finding ways to compete in the changing international economy -- is one faced everywhere in this country of 38 million. And his solutions -- new industry, infrastructure, education -- are increasingly embraced in Poland.
Unemployment has fallen in Lodz, but it is still struggling. Aside from some major thoroughfares, such as the lively Piotrkowska Street, the city's exquisite new-Gothic and Art Nouveau buildings are crumbling or blackened, as if smeared with mascara.
If you want to see the future, though, visit Manufaktura, a shopping and entertainment complex that may be the most innovative urban renewal project in Central Europe. Where there were once 13 empty industrial buildings, there are now shops, restaurants, movie theatres and a superb museum.
Tasteful and innovative, Manufaktura is the kind of commercial development you don't expect in Poland. You can find a similar sense of initiative in Wroclaw, under the leadership of its innovative mayor, and other cities in Poland, though not its towns......................
This is a country that was kept down so long that it wants nothing more than to be normal, from developing its economy to managing its foreign policy. Now it is trying to shrink bureaucracy, lower taxes and raise salaries, so older members of the work force remain in their jobs past 55, when three of four now retire. It hopes a stronger economy will stop the flow of Poles who have gone abroad (1.1 million in Britain alone) and perhaps bring some home.
Poland was quick to join NATO and the European Union and forge strong ties with the United States, trying to root itself in the West as a counterweight to Russia, with which relations remain cool.
"Poland is a quite mediocre country in some regards," says Prime Minister Donald Tusk. "The only natural resource that we have, and with which we can compete, is freedom."
Freedom. It's a powerful declaration in a country that for decades had no freedom, with a cruel history and a geography that gave Poland the unhappy reality of Germany and Russia as neighbours.
So now, as it tries to create the conditions of prosperity, it tries to rediscover its identity. It does this in part by remembering its past in institutions such as the Warsaw Rising Museum, a spectacular celebration of the campaign of resistance in 1944 in which 200,000 Poles died fighting the Nazis and Warsaw was razed.
Or, the memorials to the massacre in 1940 at Katyn, where the Soviets killed some 22,000 soldiers, politicians, intellectuals and other members of the elite, seeking to decapitate the country's leadership. The Russians, who invaded Poland 17 days after the Nazis in 1939, did not admit to this monstrous atrocity until 1992.
Today, though, it's more about the future, and there is optimism in Poland. And why not? For a country that did not exist (except for a short interlude) between 1795 and 1989, it is seeking audaciously, once again, to find the way to a better future, leaving its pathologies and prejudices behind.
No, Poland isn't the Promised Land, regardless of its breathless civic boosters. For the first time in memory, though, it is a land of promise.
Andrew Cohen is a Visiting Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. E-mail: andrewzcohen@yahoo.ca
Mile bylam zaskoczona ze w Ottawskiej gazecie napisali o Lodzi i Polsce w bardzo pozytywny sposob:).
"No, Poland isn't the Promised Land, regardless of its breathless civic boosters. For the first time in memory, though, it is a land of promise.
Source: Ottawa Citizen (2008.07.17)
A land of promise
LODZ, Poland -- In the 19th century, Lodz became the seat of Czarist Poland's new textile industry. As demand for cotton grew everywhere, thousands of workers came here seeking work in was called "the Manchester of Central Europe."
The great Jewish-German industrialists not only built magnificent red-brick factories with artistic flourishes, they built opulent homes beside them. The air was as filthy as they were rich. These palaces gave new meaning to living above the store.
By the end of the century, Lodz was famously known as "the promised land." For many of those who came here in the Industrial Revolution, it surely was, though that didn't prevent them from striking for better working conditions.
When the textile industry died in the 1990s, as it did in the northeast United States decades earlier, the city reeled. Unemployment rose sharply.
In many ways, Lodz was a reflection of Poland as it tried to shed the legacy of communism. Like other countries, it had to compete with Asia's economic tigers.
In Lodz today, things are looking up. It is one of 14 special economic zones in Poland offering incentives ("the Promised Land for Investments") to attract money. Information technology and household equipment are two new industries that have helped create some 10,000 jobs.
Marek Cieslak, who runs the Lodz Special Economic Zone, enthuses about the city's advantages, from its universities to its rich cultural life. His sales pitch, however, is much the same as the one made by Wroclaw, in western Poland, and Krakow, in southern Poland, which has now overtaken Lodz as the country's second biggest city after Warsaw.
But Mr. Cieslak isn't wrong, either. His challenge -- finding ways to compete in the changing international economy -- is one faced everywhere in this country of 38 million. And his solutions -- new industry, infrastructure, education -- are increasingly embraced in Poland.
Unemployment has fallen in Lodz, but it is still struggling. Aside from some major thoroughfares, such as the lively Piotrkowska Street, the city's exquisite new-Gothic and Art Nouveau buildings are crumbling or blackened, as if smeared with mascara.
If you want to see the future, though, visit Manufaktura, a shopping and entertainment complex that may be the most innovative urban renewal project in Central Europe. Where there were once 13 empty industrial buildings, there are now shops, restaurants, movie theatres and a superb museum.
Tasteful and innovative, Manufaktura is the kind of commercial development you don't expect in Poland. You can find a similar sense of initiative in Wroclaw, under the leadership of its innovative mayor, and other cities in Poland, though not its towns......................
This is a country that was kept down so long that it wants nothing more than to be normal, from developing its economy to managing its foreign policy. Now it is trying to shrink bureaucracy, lower taxes and raise salaries, so older members of the work force remain in their jobs past 55, when three of four now retire. It hopes a stronger economy will stop the flow of Poles who have gone abroad (1.1 million in Britain alone) and perhaps bring some home.
Poland was quick to join NATO and the European Union and forge strong ties with the United States, trying to root itself in the West as a counterweight to Russia, with which relations remain cool.
"Poland is a quite mediocre country in some regards," says Prime Minister Donald Tusk. "The only natural resource that we have, and with which we can compete, is freedom."
Freedom. It's a powerful declaration in a country that for decades had no freedom, with a cruel history and a geography that gave Poland the unhappy reality of Germany and Russia as neighbours.
So now, as it tries to create the conditions of prosperity, it tries to rediscover its identity. It does this in part by remembering its past in institutions such as the Warsaw Rising Museum, a spectacular celebration of the campaign of resistance in 1944 in which 200,000 Poles died fighting the Nazis and Warsaw was razed.
Or, the memorials to the massacre in 1940 at Katyn, where the Soviets killed some 22,000 soldiers, politicians, intellectuals and other members of the elite, seeking to decapitate the country's leadership. The Russians, who invaded Poland 17 days after the Nazis in 1939, did not admit to this monstrous atrocity until 1992.
Today, though, it's more about the future, and there is optimism in Poland. And why not? For a country that did not exist (except for a short interlude) between 1795 and 1989, it is seeking audaciously, once again, to find the way to a better future, leaving its pathologies and prejudices behind.
No, Poland isn't the Promised Land, regardless of its breathless civic boosters. For the first time in memory, though, it is a land of promise.
Andrew Cohen is a Visiting Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. E-mail: andrewzcohen@yahoo.ca