Steeple People (Redux)
Reposting one of my most-read pieces
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The piece below was first published in April 2024. Last week, my husband encouraged me to share it again, given the Trump administration’s pivot away from Ukraine and toward Russia. I’ve decided it makes sense to do so, especially since there have been so many new subscribers over the past year who likely never saw the original post.
I put a great deal of work into researching and writing this piece, and I’m grateful to everyone who takes the time to read it.
My father-in-law, who passed away last July, was a man who stood unabashedly for what is right. It feels fitting to publish this again in his honor.
-Michael
My husband and I recently returned from a weekend in Warsaw, where we celebrated the 95th birthday of my father-in-law, Leszek. He and my late mother-in-law, Mati, were both born and raised in Poland but left in the 1950s. They first moved to England, where my husband and his older brother were born, before spending the next five or more decades in the U.S. and Australia.
Last year, Leszek moved from San Francisco back to Warsaw, in part to be closer to us in Milan, but also to be closer to his family and friends in Poland. A month or so after he arrived, we paid him a visit.
Warsaw is a vibrant metropolis of nearly 1.8 million people, with grand public parks, stimulating museums and galleries and theaters, packed bars, a lively riverfront, and a truly impressive array of international restaurants. You may be surprised to hear that it frequently makes Top 10 lists as one of the best cities in Europe for vegans, with noteworthy vegan sushi, ramen, gyros, burgers, delis, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern and Moroccan food—and, of course, vegan takes on traditional Polish dishes. (I am not vegan, but I will tell you that one of the best bakeries I’ve ever been to in my life—anywhere—is eter, a vegan bakery in Warsaw.)
Leszek’s room, on the seventh floor in a new senior community, overlooks a large park with a children’s playground. A few blocks away is a stately church with a steeple that rises gracefully above the surrounding buildings.
As we sat chatting one afternoon, he explained that this neighborhood used to be part of the Jewish Ghetto in World War II. He pointed toward the church and said matter-of-factly that it had been the only thing left standing after the Ghetto was destroyed.
“Do you know why that was?” he asked. I did not.
“Because the Nazis would climb the steeple with their machine guns and shoot the Jews below.”
He opened a magazine on his desk and showed me this photo of the neighborhood where we sat talking. I was speechless.
In the 10 months since, my mind has been haunted by what he told me. And as I’ve pondered it, I’ve realized that while the Nazis he referred to lost their war almost 80 years ago, we still live in a world full of “steeple people.” They shamelessly play by their own rules, doing whatever they must to top the system and then use that perch to dominate and exploit others, always for their own selfish gain, no matter the cost to those they harm and oppress.
Vladimir Putin is one of them. And so is Donald J. Trump, former President of the United States, who recently clinched enough delegates to secure the Republican party’s nomination again in 2024.
Don’t Look Away
On June 16, 2015, Trump infamously descended the escalator in his eponymous tower1 to announce he was running for president, while claiming casually and without evidence that Mexico was “sending” rapists and criminals to the U.S.
In the nine long and difficult years since, many of us appear to have grown weary of and numb to his endless outrages, inured to the absurdities and insanities that he daily visits upon our eyes and ears. We’ve tuned out his endless lies: Up is down. Black is white. The villain is a clown, and the fraudster2 is a savior.
But we simply must not look away, must not allow ourselves to be lulled into a sense of complacency, to be habituated to his horrors. The stakes are simply too high. Far, far too high.
As CNN reported in February:
Former President Donald Trump on Saturday said he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO member country3 that doesn’t meet spending guidelines on defense in a stunning admission he would not abide by the collective-defense clause at the heart of the alliance if reelected.
“NATO was busted until I came along,” Trump said at a rally in Conway, South Carolina. “I said, ‘Everybody’s gonna pay.’ They said, ‘Well, if we don’t pay, are you still going to protect us?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ They couldn’t believe the answer.”4
Trump said “one of the presidents of a big [NATO] country” at one point asked him whether the US would still defend the country if they were invaded by Russia even if they “don’t pay.”
“No, I would not protect you,” Trump recalled telling that president. “In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.”5
Watch this video. Watch the crowd respond to this maniac, breaking into applause and cheers as Trump says he would "encourage Russia to do whatever they hell they want.”
The Biden White House rebuked the former president’s comments, saying in a statement:
“Encouraging invasions of our closest allies by murderous regimes is appalling and unhinged—and it endangers American national security, global stability, and our economy at home.”
The Biden-Harris 2024 campaign also released a statement:
“Trump’s admission that he intends to give Putin a greenlight for more war and violence, to continue his brutal assault against a free Ukraine, and to expand his aggression to the people of Poland and the Baltic States [is] appalling and dangerous.”
As reporter David Axe noted with fury in Forbes, whatever the hell Russia wants includes executing civilians in the streets; starving, beating, and electrocuting Ukrainian prisoners; and abducting and trafficking nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children. Whatever the hell Russia wants also includes bombing a theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, in March 2022, where around a thousand people had taken refuge, seeking shelter from Russian shelling and bombing. But Russia did whatever they hell they wanted and bombed the theater, in the process blowing up, burning or crushing to death at least 600 innocent people, including the elderly, women, children, and babies.
Trump has spent the past six months actively opposing legislation in the U.S. Congress to provide additional military aid to Ukraine, a country that recently began running out of ammunition as they marked the grim second anniversary of Russia's invasion. Speaker Mike Johnson bent the knee to Trump for months, refusing to even bring the aid package up for a vote before finally relenting just last weekend. The final tally in the House on Saturday was 311 to 112, an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote in favor of the aid to Ukraine. Still, it should be noted that all 112 “No” votes came from Republicans, who’ve apparently chosen to be part of what Liz Cheney now refers to as “the GOP Putin caucus.” (Just three years ago, Cheney was the GOP conference chair and the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House. She was ousted from her position of power by her Republican colleagues for refusing to bend the knee to Trump.)
One could be forgiven for thinking that Trump is behaving exactly like Putin’s puppet, as Hillary Clinton so presciently warned about on October 19, 2016.
The City That Was No More
The spire my father-in-law pointed to that day last summer belongs to St. Augustine's Church (Parafia Świetego Augustyna w Warszawie). During our most recent trip to Warsaw, my husband and I walked by the church on our way to breakfast. I already knew at that point that I had to write this piece, and as I looked up at the steeple, I was once again thinking about the Nazis, ensconced in their perch, shooting the Jews below like vermin.
Just a minute farther down the sidewalk, I stopped abruptly, jolted, just before I would have stepped on this grisly carcass.
In 2024, I hope I don’t need to remind you about the Holocaust, one of the most evil chapters of humanity’s history. (Though with neo-Nazis marching through the streets of America in broad daylight, perhaps I do.)
During the War, Poland played unwilling host to Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp, where it is estimated over 1.1 million people were killed. Though Auschwitz was the most infamous camp, there were numerous others. For example, Treblinka. I admit I’d not heard of it before I began researching this piece. But over 800,000 prisoners were killed here in just 16 months—meaning, on average, more than 1,600 people every day. In a concentration camp I’d never even heard of.
Katarzyna Utracka writes in "Warsaw – the City that is No More"6 in The Warsaw Institute Review:
[B]y 1939 Warsaw was already home to almost 1,300,000 people, ranking the seventh biggest city in Europe. [It] was beautiful, diverse, and truly European, often referred to as ‘the Paris of the North.’ Warsaw was also home to the second largest Jewish population in the world, just behind New York.
In autumn of 1940, the German authorities established an all-Jewish district, thus creating the largest ghetto in occupied Europe [with] over 450,000 people concentrated within less than 1 square mile. [St. Augustine’s Church] was incorporated into the ghetto.
According to the St. Augustine Church’s official website:
During World War II…the Germans used [the church] as a warehouse for property stolen from Jews, and then as a stable. Father Franciszek Garncarek was murdered by the Germans on December 20, 1943, and Father Leon Więckowicz was arrested for helping Jews and died on August 4, 1944, in the Gross-Rosen concentration camp.
During the Warsaw Uprising, the church tower served the Germans as an observation point and a machine gun nest.
(translated by Google from the original Polish)
Cities Unknown further explains:
After the Uprising, the Germans made a point to destroy what was left of Warsaw, inch by inch, stone by stone.
The story of the church's survival is ambiguous, and it's not known exactly why its destruction never happened, because there was certainly a plan to blow it up, but somehow this did not come to fruition. But because of this ambiguity we are left with these stunning photographs of a city left in ruins, with this lone ranger standing high above the rubble.
Again, from "Warsaw – the City that is No More":
Warsaw sustained unimaginable damage. No other European city suffered as much. Around 80% of its buildings laid in ruins. The Germans destroyed every bridge and station in the city. 90% of monuments, 80% of hospitals, 75% of schools and industrial plants were non-existent.
One researcher, Marian Chlewski, estimates that during that period alone, the Nazis transported 45,000 train cars of looted goods from Warsaw…including textiles, furs, carpets, money, factory machinery, appliances, commodities, food, textiles, and other valuables.
One of the greatest losses was undoubtedly the Saxon Palace, located at one of the most important plazas in Warsaw. Its history spanned four centuries. After the collapse of the Warsaw Uprising, it was blown up by German troops. Solely pieces of the central arcade survived the explosion, which continues to house the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier today. On November 11, 2018, as Poles were celebrating the centenary of Poland regaining independence, the president of Poland, Andrzej Duda, announced plans to reconstruct the palace. The reconstruction of Warsaw, therefore, continues to this day.”7
(Note: I edited articles quoted in this section for brevity and clarity. All emphases are mine.)
According to the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, located in the heart of the former ghetto, 90% of the Jewish community in Poland perished in the Holocaust. NINETY PERCENT.
We must remember—we MUST—that this is what it looks like when a country led by a dictator invades a neighboring country and does whatever the hell it wants.
The Threat is Real
Days after Trump ignited a global firestorm with his “I’ll encourage Russia to do whatever the hell they want” comments, he held another campaign rally. True to Trump form, he did not in any way try to backtrack or clean up the damage.
Instead, he doubled down and reiterated the fact that under a second Trump administration, the United States could not be counted on to come to the aid of its fellow NATO countries. “Look, if they’re not going to pay, we’re not going to protect. Okay?”
My answer is simple: No, Donald, it is most definitely NOT okay.
Maya Angelou once said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” I would add that if you didn't believe them the first time, or the second time, or even the 803rd time, then believe them the 804th time. Because this monstrous, self-interested imbecile is who Donald Trump really is.
Hitting Close to Home
In 2022, my husband and I spent Christmas in Poland (a NATO country). We celebrated the holiday at the family apartment of a lifelong friend of my late mother-in-law. Over dinner, talk of the Second World War surfaced. This happens often in Europe. In my experience, such talk is not predictable reminiscing of the “bad old days.” It is simply matter of fact; reminders of the War are inescapable.
Our host pointed at the wall to the left of where I was sitting and explained that it had been devastated by bombs. She showed me photographs of the apartment after the air raid, and sure enough, the wall was simply not there; in its place was a gaping hole.
In Warsaw, evidence is everywhere that the people understand full well the life-or-death stakes of the war in Ukraine. Indeed, Poland is uniquely vulnerable to a Russian invasion, as it shares a border with Ukraine that is 535 kilometers long.8
But the threat posed by Putin doesn’t end with my husband’s family and friends scattered throughout Poland, because he also has family in France (a NATO country) and England (a NATO country). My cousin Zach and his wife and their young daughter live in Lithuania (a NATO country), which—along with Poland—shares a border with the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad Oblast. We also have friends in Portugal, Germany, Norway, Greece, the Netherlands—all NATO countries. And, of course, we live in Italy, also a NATO country.
We are all in the same boat, and we will sink or sail together.
Our Time is Now
NATO marked its 75th anniversary earlier this month. President Biden noted in a statement9 marking the occasion:
"Now, like generations before us, we must choose to protect this progress and build on it. We must remember that the sacred commitment we make to our Allies—to defend every inch of NATO territory—makes us safer too, and gives the United States a bulwark of security unrivaled by any other nation in the world. And like our predecessors, we must ask ourselves what can we do—what must we do—to create a more peaceful future."
The prospect of a second presidential term by Donald Trump is a threat to me and my husband, and to our family and friends here in Europe.
Trump is a cancer on the presidency, a stain on the American experiment that can never be blotted out.
As I wrote years ago:
Today I would add a few more adjectives to that list. He is a narcissistic moral reprobate, and an increasingly deranged and demented megalomaniac who is unable to abide by even basic standards of legality, much less decency. He cannot be contained or constrained, and he absolutely must never again wield the immense powers afforded by the steeple of the American presidency.
Words like “reckless” and “foolish” drastically undersell just how severe of a threat he is, not only to the American people and to America’s democracy, but to the world order that has governed the West for nearly 80 years.
But it is not yet too late.
We can organize, register, and then vote in November to make sure Donald Trump is never again within spitting distance of the Oval Office.
Note: All photographs included in this piece are my work, except where otherwise noted.
Yes, this is the same Trump Tower where his 11,000-sf penthouse is located, which he claimed for years in financial documents was more than 30,000 sf, a move that eventually factored in his trial on charges of fraud, falsifying business records, issuing false financial statements, conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, and conspiracy to falsify business records. Trump has also long claimed that the penthouse is on the 66th-68th floors, even though the building only has 58 floors. “The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience,” Judge Arthur Engoron wrote in his 92-page judgment this past February.
I realize it’s difficult to keep track of all of Trump’s fraud, but this most recent case (which resulted in Trump being fined more than $350 million) is separate from the case brought by the New York attorney general in 2013 after Trump allegedly defrauded thousands of students in his Trump University. (He paid a $25 million settlement without admitting wrongdoing). It is also separate from the case brought in 2018, again by the New York attorney general, for “a broad pattern of illegal activity” by Trump’s charity foundation. (Trump paid a $2 million fine and admitted misusing charity funds to, among other things, purchase a $10,000 portrait of himself for display at one of his hotels. The foundation was dissolved.)
NATO stands for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It is a collective security system, as Wikipedia explains. If you’re interested in knowing more, the official NATO website is a good place to start.
You’ll not be surprised to hear that what Trump claimed here about NATO’s finances is factually false. As CNN noted, “Trump has for years inaccurately described how NATO funding works. NATO has a target that each member country spends a minimum of 2% of gross domestic product on defense, and most countries are not meeting that target. But the figure is a guideline and not a binding contract, nor does it create ‘bills’; member countries haven’t been failing to pay their share of NATO’s common budget to run the organization.”
This is especially rich coming from a man whose businesses have filed for bankruptcy six times and who 👏 has 👏 been 👏 notorious 👏 for 👏 decades 👏 for 👏 not 👏 paying 👏 his 👏 bills. And yes, in case it wasn’t clear, I just linked in one sentence to a dozen different articles about Trump’s decades-long history of not paying his bills. I do the research so you don’t have to.
At the time of original publication, this could be found at https://warsawinstitute.review/issue-2019/issue-12019/warsaw-city-no-more/. However, the Warsaw Institute is currently building a new site and the link is not functional.
Indeed, an architect was just hired last fall to carry this out, nearly 80 years after the war ended.
To give a sense of scale, that is roughly the distance from Jacksonville to Miami, Florida. Look at a map; it’s nearly the entire length of the state, top to bottom.
At the time of original publication, the statement could be found at https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/04/04/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-natos-75th-anniversary/. That link is no longer functional, presumably due to the purging of government websites the Trump-Musk administration has undertaken.
Powerful writing. Nice to see those gracious interiors, and hear a bit about your late father-in-law.
It’s staggering to compare the photographs you share with those of post-A bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or post-incendiary bomb Tokyo. It sounds like Warsaw was destroyed at the ground level, by hand and with selective intent, rather than indiscriminately from the air. I can only hope that people had fled (or died previously) by the time this destruction came, but maybe I should know better than to hope.
As for the similarities to the present day US, yes. But of course the 30s and 40s repeated the bewildering carnage of the Russian late imperial period and the Great War. Which were preceded by the colonial slaughter in late 19th c Africa and Asia, and that in turn in North and South America, centuries of chattel slavery, and on and on.
You are right to call attention to what’s happening now. You are right to honor the memory of those whose lives were obliterated, and invite us to remember them by renewing our commitment to courage. Thank you.
Here are some well-known words from another such battle, from another warrior like yourself, reminding you to protect yourself and your energy:
[T]he function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being. […] And you don’t have to do it anymore. […] Where the mind dwells on changing the minds of racists is a very dank place. […] Racial ignorance is a prison from which there is no escape because there’re no doors. And there are old, old men and old, old women running institutions, governments, homes all over the world who need to believe in their racism and need to have the victims of racism concentrate all their creative abilities on them.
— Toni Morrison (Portland State Black Studies Center, 1975)
We talked a lot about this piece at the National Holocaust Memorial and Museum in DC a couple weeks ago. I was just staring at the Warsaw Ghetto replicas in the museum and thinking about what you wrote. It is horrific and also heartbreaking—then and almost more so now. How is this happening again? Did we learn nothing?