Cracow enters the novel through Greenwald’s drunken speech at a celebration after the war. Recalling that his uncle and aunt had been killed in the persecution of Jews, he makes the city a personal point of reference for the atrocities he describes and for his fear of what might have happened to his mother had the war been lost.

Family Ties and Distance

Greenwald says he never saw the relatives in Cracow. As a child, he saw letters they sent in Jewish, but could not read them. His connection to them is therefore mediated by family correspondence he could not understand, a distance that makes his account of their fate both intimate and incomplete.

Role in Greenwald’s Speech

The mention of Cracow helps explain why Greenwald imagines making Old Yellowstain a hero in a war novel. He contrasts the relatives whose fate he recounts with the mother he fears losing, turning a distant city into the setting for a personal measure of what the war meant. In his speech, Cracow links private family loss to the larger danger facing Jews.