Pedalling Poland

Pedalling Poland by Bernard Newman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was motivated to read this book when I learned it has been recently published in Poland.
Firstly I found the idea strange - to publish a sort of cyclist's memories some 90 years after they have been originally published.
The second reservation was - memories from cycling trip.
My own experience says, that it cannot avoid frequent references to condition of the roads and some details of cycling effort.
That's correct - I would say it takes some 20% of the book.
What remains?
Many, many scenes from the world which no longer exists.
Poland between world wars was a strange country.
It has been created at the conference table in Versailles after 123 years of non-existence. Politicians who created it, had to consider interests of many countries and a very volatile political climate. In the effect, Poland had a very irregular shape and included few areas boiling with political conflicts.
Effect on the book - we read quite a number of stories from a very volatile world, which was doomed for disappearance and which disappeared.
Here I give credit to the author for being an honest and compassionate judge.

One special point - Jews in pre-War Poland...

"At Łowicz I really met the Polish Jew. In German Poland he is not numerically strong and scarcely noticeable. As I got into Russian Poland, however, I saw his increasing influence; in town after town I noticed how most of the trade was in his hands, but in Łowicz the effect was startling. The lengthy main street of the town is a succession of insignificant shops, practically every one of which is held by a Jew. The miniature pavement was crowded with men in black coats, wearing round hats with tiny peaks: they also wore whiskers in considerable variety. And though they despise the fruit of the hog, they do not hesitate to sell it to others: only that morning I had bought my ration of ham from a very obvious Israelite!...

Warsaw - their numbers are positively enormous—there are over a quarter of a million Jews in Warsaw, and practically the whole of this number is concentrated in this one small area. Ninety per cent of the people, I imagine, in some of these streets were Jews. The boys were perhaps the most remarkable, in their costume with their curls about their ears, and faces as pale and delicately carved as those of girls. The youths are less attractive artistically; they never shave, of course, and a slow-growing beard is not the best adornment for a young man. The standard of living generally is appallingly low. Both men and women work at beggarly wages, almost invariably for other Jews—for the commerce of Poland is almost exclusively in the hands of Jews. It was unthinkable that these people were of the same breed as members of the Jewish intelligentsia that I had met in England and Continental countries, including Poland itself. Yet so it was. "
For me it was a discovery - I never heard or read this type of report in any media.

Interesting point - the author is quite optimistic about the future of Nazism. He acknowledges economic progress it brought to Germany and is absolutely sure that in years to come, this orderly and hard working nation will turn it in a good way.
How wrong!
But it looks like all European politicians shared the same view.

In the last scenes of the book, the author visits a site of a battle of Tannenberg - a massacre of Russian Army in early stages of WWI. Nazis build there a gigantic memorial glorifying the victors and it looks like the author was strongly and positively impressed by it.
I found this point very disappointing.

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