Cracow enters the account not as a depicted setting but as the place associated with Barney Greenwald’s aunt and uncle, whose fate gives his reflections on war and military service a personal and familial dimension.

Family Ties and Loss

Barney Greenwald says that he had an aunt and an uncle in Cracow. He never saw them, and the letters they sent when he was a child were written in a language he could not read, despite his Jewish identity. The connection to the city is therefore mediated by family correspondence he could not understand and relatives he never knew in person.

The City in Greenwald’s Argument

Greenwald says that his aunt and uncle had been turned into soap by the persecution of Jews in Europe. He invokes this loss while explaining why he would make Old Yellowstain a hero: ordinary servicemen had manned guns while he pursued civilian work, and their service helped defend a country whose safety he had taken for granted. Cracow thus marks the reach of the war into Greenwald’s family history, even though the narrative does not portray the city itself.