This is Randi Hacker with another Postcard from Abroad from the KU Centers for East Asian Studies and Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

These days you hear a lot about how climate change might affect our future – but what about its effects on the past? Due to a prolonged drought, newly exposed riverbeds in Poland are revealing historical secrets from Europe’s tortured 20th century. In the Vistula River, explorers have found a crashed WW2 Soviet bomber plane and the human remains of its pilot, a stark reminder of the 600,000 Soviet troops killed fighting the German army on Poland’s soil. Also found were fragments of Jewish tombstones, removed from a Jewish cemetery in Warsaw during WW2 and used as building materials to reinforce the river’s banks. As our world changes around us, these historical legacies popping up out of Eastern Europe’s murky past remind us of where we have been, and what we should avoid in the future.

With thanks to Adrienne Landry for this text, from the KU Center for East Asian Studies, this is Randi Hacker. Wish you were here.