by Olgierd Budrewicz
photographs by Janusz Lesniak

Visit and discover the best known and most beautiful places in Poland. This series of photographic albums with texts in English and Polish will take you on tours of discovery.

Enjoy the full color photos by some of Poland's best photographers and learn about the country and its people. These albums present the beautiful regions in photos and words. We hope you enjoy the tours and texts which are in both Polish and English.

Where are all those Jewish shetels - from the Eastern marches of Poland, from Mazovia, from Lesser Poland - those small places known from literature and songs?  We know: they died.  Or more precisely - they were murdered.
Today, when there is no longer a rich Jewish ethnic culture in Poland, when the once numerous synagogues and graveyards have disappeared, and when there are hardly any Jews left, Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter of Cracow, seems like a miracle.  Around Ulica Jozefa you enter a different world in which, inexplicably, the spirit of the past has survived.  At the same time it has not been turned into a museum - a risk with sites where all the life has gone and all that is left are the inanimate objects.  Numerous signs of the history of its Jewish inhabitants survive in Cracow's quarter of Kazimierz.  Perhaps it's thanks to the Royal City's atmosphere, tradition, and good memory?  After all, this is where it all began, in the 14th century, under King Casimir the Great.