BORNE SULINOWO, Poland — Set in a thick forest, ringed by limpid lakes and freed from violent crime, the city of Borne Sulinowo in northwestern Poland has simple bucolic attraction — aside from the ghosts on each eerily quiet avenue of the Nazi after which Soviet troopers who constructed it.
Governed for the previous three a long time by Poland, the city was managed by and a part of Germany earlier than World War II; seized by the Red Army in 1945; and occupied by Moscow’s forces till 1992. For a time, it embraced its darkish facet, keen to draw guests and cash to a forlorn and previously forbidden zone so secret it didn’t seem on maps.
Military re-enactors, together with lovers from Germany and Russia, visited annually to stage a parade, wearing Soviet and Nazi uniforms, that are banned from public show in Germany.
A Polish businessman opened the Russia Hotel, adorning it with pictures of himself and a pal wearing Russian army uniforms and with communist-era banners embroidered with pictures of Lenin. His different ventures within the city included a restaurant named after Rasputin and boozy, Russia-themed company occasions.
Russia’s full-scale of invasion of Ukraine stopped all that. Kitsch turned offensively creepy.
“Everything changed very quickly,” stated Monika Konieczna-Pilszek, the supervisor of the Russia Hotel and daughter of its founder. Online opinions, she stated, instantly went from “commenting on our food to talking about burning us down.”
She informed her father they needed to change the identify. “Instead of attracting people it was repelling them,” she stated. The inn is now referred to as the Borne Sulinowo Guesthouse. An enormous Soviet banner hung within the hallway subsequent to its restaurant has been turned spherical so Lenin is not seen.
“Nobody wants to be reminded of Russia these days,” Ms. Koniecnza-Pilszek stated.
Dariusz Tederko, an area official answerable for selling the city, lamented that the struggle in Ukraine “has turned everything upside down.” The army re-enactors, he stated, are not welcome. The Russians couldn’t come anyway due to a authorities ban.
Trying to attract extra Poles and Western Europeans, he now promotes the city’s much less triggering charms. “We have lots of beautiful heather,” he stated, waving a brochure with photos of mountain climbing trails and wildflowers.
But he misses the prewar days when Russia was “not so sensitive,” and Borne Sulinowo didn’t need to really feel ashamed concerning the one factor that set it other than numerous different locations in Poland providing nice surroundings and fairly flowers.
He stated he was nonetheless in contact with retired Russian troopers, together with one now working within the Kremlin, who served right here throughout the Cold War and who used to return frequently for journeys down reminiscence lane.
Unlike many Poles, residents of Borne Sulinowo usually harbor little private animosity towards Russians. They are appalled by the bloodshed in Ukraine however blame Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin.
During the Soviet period, the city — dwelling to greater than 10,000 troopers of the Northern Group of Forces — was a world unto itself, scrubbed from maps and off limits to Poles with out particular entry passes, although many nonetheless sneaked in to purchase meals and vodka.
Renata Szmurlo, a nurse who grew up in a Polish city close to the Soviet zone and moved to Borne Sulinowo together with her household after the Russians left, recalled a carefree youth of biking previous army checkpoints together with her associates to go to the city’s retailers. They accepted Polish forex however, stocked with provides from Moscow for Soviet officers, had extra items than Polish ones.
“The Russians were great guys,” she recalled.
When the city was a part of Germany, Hitler visited, arriving by practice in 1938 to examine what was then a secret army coaching floor, arrange within the forest in order that Nazi commanders may furtively follow the blitzkrieg techniques that, only a 12 months later, would plunge Poland after which the remainder of Europe into World War II.
“If you just look at the trees and buildings, everything here looks OK, but if you know the history of this place it makes your skin crawl,” stated Dariusz Czerniawski, a former trainer who moved to Borne Sulinowo shortly after the final Russians pulled out. They left a ghost city of empty, dilapidated barracks, instantly silent capturing ranges and fields rutted with tank tracks.
After a 12 months below the management of the Polish military, Borne Sulinowo reappeared on maps in 1993 as simply one other Polish city, inhabited by a number of early pioneers like Mr. Czerniawski. “It was so quiet, I wanted to scream,” he recalled. “The silence and emptiness were terrifying.”
Over time, extra Poles arrived, attracted by low-cost housing and the prospect for a recent begin. The city now has almost 5,000 year-round residents and plenty of extra individuals throughout the summer season. It nonetheless feels empty and remoted.
The major street — Adolf Hitler Strasse throughout the Nazi interval and Stalin Avenue after 1945 — is now Independence Street.
Lined with gimcrack Soviet condo blocks intermingled with sturdy villas left by the Germans, it has a number of retailers, a defunct pizza place and the Sasha Cafe, run by a Russian-speaking man from japanese Ukraine, who first got here right here as a younger photographer working for the Soviet army command.
A goal of suspicious whispering by locals and scrutiny by Polish authorities, he just lately put his property up on the market.
Mr. Czerniawski, the early pioneer, immediately runs the city’s museum and has spent a whole lot of time occupied with tips on how to take care of the previous.
“It would perhaps be easier to demolish the whole town,” he stated, “But what would that give us — just a big empty space with no memory of anything?”
Borne Sulinowo, he believes, must survive as a “unique place built by the two most brutal totalitarian systems of the last century” — and as a reminder of the place such programs lead. “Usually to war,” he stated.
“We have to remember our bad past so that we can learn something for the future,” he stated.
He has resisted ideas to take away from the museum a model wearing a Russian army uniform and has rejected calls for that the Soviet-designed tank reverse the doorway be taken away. Some residents threatened to destroy it.
But the tank, Mr. Czerniawski famous, was put there by Polish authorities, who took it from a Warsaw army museum. “It is Soviet design but was made in Poland,” he stated.
“It is part of our history — perhaps not the glorious history we would like — but it is ours,” he stated.
The most sinister reminders of Moscow’s former hegemony — concrete bunkers housing nuclear warheads — have largely been swallowed up the by the forest close to Brzeznica-Kolonia, a village 19 miles south of city.
“Entry Categorically Forbidden. Danger of death or disability,” learn indicators put up in entrance of the crumbling, weed-clogged bunkers.
Until the warheads have been taken again to Russia in 1990 because the Soviet Union unraveled, they have been a part of the Vistula Program, a top-secret deployment of nuclear weapons in Poland that started within the Sixties. Throughout the Cold War, Moscow insisted it had no nuclear weapons in Poland whereas accusing the United States of threatening peace by placing its personal warheads in Europe.
For Jan Chmielowski, a Pole who first visited Borne Sulinowo in 1994 and “immediately fell in love with this strange place,” the Soviet previous was for years “just a big sad joke” as a result of all the things left by the Russians gave the impression to be falling aside.
He purchased an outdated German villa, turned it right into a guesthouse and, impressed by the Russia Hotel subsequent door, started organizing company team-building occasions that includes vodka, surly Soviet-style service and mock arrests by pretend Russian officers with weapons. He has dropped that and now organizes French-themed occasions with champagne and with out weapons.
“Everything Russian stopped being funny after the war in Ukraine,” he lamented.
Source: www.nytimes.com