Sir Isaac Newton popularized the phrase “standing on the shoulders of giants,” attributing his accomplishments to the intellectual foundations laid by scientists who came before him. I am no scientist, and I did not come to Poland to study natural science, yet Newton’s phrase has sprung to mind every day I have spent here.

I chose to study in Poland because I am ethnically Polish. My paternal grandparents were from Poland, and though I grew up completely Americanized, I remember Polish traditions on Easter and Christmas Eve. I remember my babcia’s (grandmother’s) homemade Polish food and the stories my father told me about my grandparents, describing the unimaginable hardships they endured before, during, and after the Second World War. I continue to think of my grandparents as the strongest and toughest people I have ever known, even though neither of them was much above five feet tall — they were giants in every meaningful sense of the word. As a history major studying at the Jagiellonian University of Kraków, I have found that the theme of this “race of giants,” of these “mighty men of old, men of renown” dominates the history of this place, which historian Norman Davies aptly titled “God’s Playground.” The national symbol of Poland is the “Biały Orel” (White Eagle), a strong and noble animal; yet the phoenix, the fantastical bird that continually dies and rises again from the ashes, would be just as appropriate.

Yesterday, I went to Wawel Castle, where haughty Polish kings (when Poland was a kingdom with Kraków her capital) ruled from atop a hill overlooking the city. There, at Wawel Cathedral, I saw some of the finest Renaissance architecture in the world. I saw outrageous displays of material wealth and military trophies, and I gazed over a beautiful city that survived thanks only to the labors of Poles over the past millennium, all while comfortably drinking hot chocolate and eating sernik (cheesecake). I was standing on the shoulders of giants yet again. This grand display left to Polish posterity was a result of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, then the major power in Central and Eastern Europe — the Polish “Golden Age.” From Wawel, once the seat of an empire stretching from the Baltic to the Black seas, I could see, somberly standing, Kopiec Kósciuszki (Kósciuszko’s Mound), named for the Polish hero who helped secure independence for America but who was unable to do the same for his own country, which had been annexed by the Russian Empire. From 1795 to 1918, Poles withstood over a century of attempts to eliminate their culture. The ashes of the phoenix come to mind. That mound best illustrates the pall of sadness that hangs over this country, reminding today’s Poles that their prosperity is a historical anomaly, merely a winning lottery ticket bought by previous generations but only now able to be redeemed.

Last weekend, I went to Warsaw. Standing under the massive Palace of Culture and Science “gifted” to Poland by her “liberator” Joseph Stalin, I couldn’t help but wonder what my grandparents — who were born in Poland between the World Wars and died in the U.S. over a decade ago — would think of a Kula in the capital. In a Polish history course, a professor referred to the interwar period as a time of immense optimism, a phoenix rising from the ashes. But Poland disappeared yet again in 1939 after the Nazis and Communists jointly invaded, triggering the Second World War. Back to ashes. 

In Warsaw, I visited a museum dedicated to the 1944 Warsaw Uprising  — when Poles attempted to gain independence from German occupation before the Soviets could “liberate” Poland. If you know me, you know that “emotional” is not a word used to describe me, and yet, I scarcely held back tears in that museum. There I saw armbands that the Germans made Polish forced laborers wear when they were taken to Germany; my grandfather, the sweetest and most gentle man I ever met, likely had to wear one. I wandered into an exhibition entitled “the Little Insurgent,” where I saw a plaque commemorating a Polish corporal who earned a medal for bravery in the Uprising and later died in battle. He was eleven years old. I saw a photo of smiling resistance fighters, none of whom would have looked out of place playing frisbee on the Sunken Garden. They, too, died in battle. 

There are still bullet holes in many buildings in Warsaw.

I started a Polish language course this week. Everyone in the course introduced themselves, and most of my classmates are Ukrainian. I assumed they were high schoolers and was surprised to hear they were 17 and 18, freshmen at the university. In many ways, the boys reminded me of myself at age 15, caught in the transition from boy to man. Another American asked them if they would get drafted if they went back home. A pubescent student looked up, only briefly making eye contact, “Probably not,” he said, before looking back down at the ground. “They’re not drafting university students right now.” 

His friend with an equally puerile face chimed in, “But because we are 18 year-old males, if we went home, then we would not be allowed to leave, by law.” I have my own draft card, of course, but hearing a young man who looked like he still had not yet had his first shave say that he would probably not get drafted if he went home is much, much harder to stomach than looking at my own government-issued blank check to the god of war. I had never felt so old and sad. 

And so, writing this from Poland, I can see that I stand on the shoulders of giants. I walk in a country that owes its independence to the millions who came before, who planted trees under whose shade they would never sit. I only exist because of my grandparents who suffered the triple cruelties of poverty and two foreign occupations before emigrating across the world to build a better life for their descendants. I am one of those descendants, and I do have a better life than they had. If they were still alive, I would fear standing next to them, as I would seem an incomparably small man.