Just numbers. (Kris Kotarski, Warszawa, May 2009)

Spiegel probably summed it up best: “War memorials are meant to honor the dead — not lead to more of them.”

Yet, two years ago, when the Estonian government decided to remove a Soviet war memorial from the center of Tallinn to a military cemetery on the outskirts of the capital, that is exactly what happened. The protestors turned violent, a man was stabbed, and the World War II casualty list ticked up one more time.

Some, especially in western Europe, were surprised by the ferocity of the reaction. For those east of what once was the Iron Curtain, such moments are not surprising at all.

A couple of days ago, I read Boris Dolgin’s OpenDemocracy essay grappling with the politics and motives behind such outbursts. The photo represents my personal views on the matter.

It’s a headstone at the Soviet war memorial in Warsaw, a city where the Red Army stood on the sidelines as the Germans brutally put down an uprising in 1944. For that reason (and the ensuing Soviet dominance which lasted until 1989) some see such sites as a historical affront to Poland’s historical memory.

Me? I see it as fitting testament to the treatment of human beings by Stalin’s regime. #519… no age, rank, or explanation. No mother, father, brother or sister. A single red star is all that is left of him, while his commanders and their successors argue about how to best claim credit in his name…

“Come back?” (Kris Kotarski, East Jerusalem, June 2007)

“Kick with us,” said a young boy on a dusty football pitch, after I threw a wayward ball back onto the field from the street below. “Are you English? What is your favourite team?”

I lasted about 30 minutes on the pitch before we collapsed, exhausted, and shared our water before the kids got up to play again.

“Come back?” said the same young boy, the only one in the group who could put a sentence together in English.

“Maybe,” I smiled. “I hope I can.”

***

A couple of days later, I came back with a Canadian friend who had lived in Jerusalem for a few months without ever venturing outside the Jewish neighbourhoods. I suggested a walk in the afternoon, hoping to stop for dinner somewhere where we could enjoy the evening breeze.

As we weaved through the city in search of a suitable place to sit down, we argued about politics and peace and war, only pausing long enough to lift our heads in unison to sip from our water bottles as we squinted at the sun.

“…it will be a couple of generations before anything can happen,” said my friend in between gulps. “In any case, it’s getting late. Let’s get something to eat…”

When we walked past the same dusty football pitch, the boy was gone.

Tourists are snobs. (Kris Kotarski, Paris, December 2008)

Tourists are snobs. Of course, sometimes even snobs get lucky.

Last winter, a few days before Christmas, I decided to head up Rue Lepic to clear my head.

It was cold, it was dark, and the streets were bare except for a few residents hurrying home with their shopping bags.

I walked past a window with a family eating supper.

My iPod battery died.

Place du Tertre was empty.

Plus three, with a moist breeze.

The cemetery gate looked open, which was strange for such a late hour.

I almost felt guilty for walking up and peeking in…

“Blessed are the dead for their hands do not freeze…” (Kris Kotarski, Berlin, May 2009)

Layers upon layers of history coexist in the Reichstag, which has been home to the German Parliament since 1999.

Some coexist gracefully—for example, Norman Foster’s glass dome is a beautiful and unabashedly modern addition to the original 1882 design. Others, such as the Soviet graffiti still found inside the building, continue to cause friction (I promise a photograph sometime soon). Such is the fate of the building that once played such an important role in Hitler’s rise, and which remains a powerful symbol of German reunification.

I took the photo earlier this month when my cousin from Warsaw visited Berlin, and we both smiled at the fact that those layers of history are not so easy to figure out sometimes, even for us.

“Should we tell our grandparents that we stood on the roof on the German Parliament?” he asked.

“They probably won’t mind,” I answered.

“But should we tell them we were sightseeing?”

Still searching for some great reward. (Kris Kotarski, Bieszczadzki Park Narodowy, July 2008)

Once upon a time, when I was a little boy, I walked down from a grassy mountaintop after a long hike. I was tired, and I wore a frown. I was frustrated that I was too old to be carried on someone’s shoulders like my little cousin, and equally upset that I was too young to be on equal footing with the adults.

She was eight, maybe nine, and she liked to sing the same gypsy folk songs that my mother and aunt so adored. She wore a loose sweater—I do not remember if it was purple or blue—and I wore a red flannel shirt with clear plastic buttons.

I did not like folk songs, I liked my dad’s Depeche Mode cassette. I was walking behind the others humming a tune to myself, when, during a moment of collective silence, she slowed down, looked at me with a smile and told me that I should enjoy the view.

“What is so special about this view?” I asked.*

She crinkled her nose, and looked up toward my aunt in search of approval.

“Maybe some day, when you are older, you will understand…”

* My aunt took this photograph twenty-some years later, and showed it to me last month. Same spot, give or take 50 meters.