I’ve lived in Poland for 35 years. I’ve come to love this country, its people, and especially Kraków, the city I’ve called home for most of my adult life. On Saturday, November 7, I was reminded why. But it began with one of the most frightening moments I’ve ever experienced as a father.
At approximately 2:50 p.m., I dropped off my 18-year-old daughter, Sophie, at Kraków’s beautiful Main Market Square. She was meeting friends at a café just around the corner.
Ten minutes later, a gunman opened fire on innocent people in the very same square.
Six people were killed. Many others were wounded. A peaceful Saturday afternoon in one of Europe’s most beautiful and historic city centres suddenly became a scene of unimaginable horror.
I had no idea what was unfolding.
Then my phone rang. It was Sophie’s grandmother.
“Jasiu, I hope you’re not near the Square. TV is reporting a mass shooting!”
My heart sank.
I had just dropped off my daughter. Right there. Ten minutes earlier.
I immediately called Sophie. She answered, thank God. She was inside a café with her friends. I told her to stay exactly where she was and not to venture outside.
Any parent can imagine what was going through my mind during those moments. That sickening feeling of fear and helplessness is something I will never forget.
Sophie was safe. But six other families would never have that relief. Their loved ones were gone, their lives shattered in an instant. My heart goes out to every one of them.
And yet, as the details emerged over the following hours, another story began to unfold. A story of extraordinary courage, remarkable professionalism, and ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
This is the story I want to share. Because, amid the horror, I have never been prouder of Poland and the people of Kraków.
Three Minutes That Made All the Difference
Shortly after 3:00 p.m., a 24-year-old gunman began shooting at random people in Kraków’s
Main Market Square. He subsequently fled through the city, firing along his route and even shooting at a passing tram.
The police emergency system was alerted within seconds. The response was astonishingly fast.
Within the second minute, municipal guards were on the scene. By the third minute, police officers had arrived and intervened. Within the fourth minute, the first emergency medical team reached the square. Think about that.
In the space of just four minutes, the authorities had received the emergency calls, dispatched police, confronted the danger, and begun bringing medical assistance to the victims.
Two regular Kraków patrol officers, Jakub Kulik and Artur Morański, were among those who confronted the attacker.
They weren’t an elite counterterrorism team. They were ordinary police officers carrying their standard equipment, suddenly faced with a heavily armed gunman. They could have waited for heavily armed reinforcements. They could have hesitated in the face of overwhelming danger.
Instead, they acted.
The confrontation ended near the intersection of Stradomska and Dietla streets, where the attacker was finally stopped. But both officers were gravely wounded in the exchange of gunfire. Their actions helped prevent what might have become an even greater catastrophe.
As I write this, both officers are fighting to recover from their injuries.
These two men deserve our admiration, gratitude, and prayers.
They were ordinary policemen who, when confronted with an extraordinary situation, demonstrated extraordinary courage.
Then Came the Doctors
What happened next was equally remarkable.
Just a short distance away, two Kraków surgeons, Professor Michał Pędziwiatr and Dr. Mateusz Wierdak, had been enjoying a Saturday meal with family and friends.
When the shooting occurred nearby, they initially sought shelter. Once the gunfire stopped, they rushed to help the wounded.
They found several people lying on the street, including the two critically injured police officers. With the assistance of police officers already at the scene, who supplied emergency medical kits and secured the area, the surgeons immediately went to work.
One of the officers was bleeding so severely that every second mattered.
Dr. Wierdak applied pressure to control the bleeding, an intervention Professor Pędziwiatr later said may well have saved the officer’s life. These men weren’t on duty. They weren’t in a hospital. They didn’t have an operating room or a full medical team behind them.
They had their training, their instincts, their hands, and their determination to save another human being. And they acted. They also helped treat the wounded attacker.
That last detail is worth reflecting upon. Even the man responsible for this terrible crime received medical care.
Because that’s what medical professionals do. They save lives. They don’t decide whose life is worth saving. When interviewed afterwards, the doctors were modest about what they had done. They stressed the teamwork involved, the professionalism of the police, and the contributions of others at the scene.
To them, helping was simply their duty. To the rest of us, it was something much more.
It was humanity at its best.
Ordinary People, Extraordinary Humanity
Across the square, other remarkable acts of courage and compassion were unfolding.
A nurse named Iwona, visiting Kraków from Jarocin, reportedly emerged from a nearby shop and began helping a young woman who had suffered a serious gunshot wound.
Other passers-by joined the rescue efforts, helping the injured while emergency personnel made their way to the scene.
And in an extraordinary coincidence, six volunteers from Dublin Civil Defence happened to be visiting Kraków that weekend. These Irish visitors found themselves in the middle of a tragedy hundreds of kilometres from home.
They could have fled. Nobody would have blamed them. Instead, they put their emergency training into action, performing CPR, controlling bleeding, and helping wounded strangers.
Polish police officers. Kraków surgeons. A visiting nurse. Irish volunteers. Ordinary people walking through the city on a Saturday afternoon.
Different backgrounds. Different nationalities. Different professions.
All united by one instinct: someone needs help, and I can do something.
That is a powerful message.
A Tragedy Almost Unthinkable in Poland
There’s another important aspect of this story that deserves attention.
In my 35 years living in Poland, I have never experienced anything remotely like what happened in Kraków on Saturday.
Mass shootings are extraordinarily rare here – none recorded since 1991 when I first arrived. Gun crime is uncommon, and serious violent crime is relatively rare. Poland has long been regarded as one of Europe’s safest countries, something that those of us who live here often take for granted.
It’s also one of the many reasons millions of visitors come to Poland each year. Alongside its rich history, extraordinary architecture, natural beauty, and vibrant culture, visitors discover a country where they can generally feel remarkably safe.
One horrific incident does not erase that record. Nor should it fundamentally change how we think about Poland or Kraków.
But here’s what makes Saturday’s response even more extraordinary.
The people who responded were not accustomed to mass shootings.
These weren’t police officers who regularly confront heavily armed gunmen. These weren’t emergency medical teams routinely treating casualties from mass shootings. And these certainly weren’t ordinary citizens who had become accustomed to seeing people gunned down in the streets.
Quite the opposite.
They were responding to a kind of violence that was almost unimaginable in their everyday lives. And yet, when that unimaginable moment arrived, they knew what to do.
Their response wasn’t the product of familiarity with such tragedies. It was the result of preparation, training, professionalism, courage, and a deeply human instinct to help others.
That, to me, makes their actions even more admirable.
Poland’s safety record is something to be proud of. And the way its people responded when that safety was so brutally shattered is something to be equally proud of.
A Country That Responded
One of the most striking aspects of Saturday’s tragedy was the speed and coordination of Poland’s emergency response.
The first emergency call came almost immediately after the attack began. Nearly 40 calls were received by the emergency notification centre.
Municipal guards responded within two minutes. Police intervened in the third minute. Emergency medical personnel arrived in the fourth. Firefighters were on the scene shortly afterwards.
Ultimately, the response involved more than 1,100 police officers, dozens of firefighters, numerous medical teams, and an extraordinary mobilisation of public resources. But this was not simply about the numbers.
It was about preparedness. Training. Professionalism. Decisive action. And people understand that when lives are at stake, every second matters. We’ve all seen tragedies elsewhere in the world where hesitation, confusion, or failures of coordination made terrible situations even worse.
The 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two teachers were murdered while police delayed confronting the gunman, remains one of the most painful examples.
Kraków demonstrated something very different.
The officers didn’t wait for someone else to assume responsibility. The doctors didn’t wait for an ambulance before beginning lifesaving treatment. Ordinary citizens didn’t assume that helping was somebody else’s job.
People acted. And because they acted, lives were almost certainly saved.
Why This Matters to Me
I came to Poland as a young American more than three decades ago. Over the years, I’ve built a business here, raised a family, made wonderful friends, and watched Poland transform itself into one of Europe’s great success stories.
I’ve always admired the resilience of the Polish people. Poland has endured more than its share of tragedy throughout history. Yet the country has repeatedly demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to endure, rebuild, and move forward.
There’s a particular kind of Polish determination I’ve come to know and admire. A practical, no-nonsense willingness to confront problems, take responsibility, and get things done.
I’ve seen it in business, in my community, and among friends and neighbours.
On Saturday, we saw it displayed under the most terrible circumstances imaginable. And we saw something else, equally important.
Compassion.
The determination to help a stranger. The courage to put another person’s life ahead of your own safety. The willingness to act not because somebody ordered you to, but because you knew it was the right thing to do.
These aren’t exclusively Polish qualities, of course. We saw that in the actions of the Irish volunteers. They are universal human values.
But on November 7, they were demonstrated in the streets of Kraków with extraordinary clarity. And that makes me incredibly proud of the city and country I call home.
Ten Minutes
I’ve thought a great deal about those ten minutes.
Ten minutes between dropping Sophie off at the Square and the beginning of the shooting.
Ten minutes that, under slightly different circumstances, might have changed our family’s life forever.
When I heard her grandmother’s frightened voice on the telephone, and then called Sophie to make sure she was safe, I experienced a fear I hope never to experience again. And I know how unbelievably fortunate we were.
Six families received devastating news that afternoon. Others are sitting beside hospital beds, hoping and praying for the recovery of their loved ones.
I don’t want my family’s close call to overshadow their suffering. Quite the opposite. It has made their loss feel even more personal. My deepest condolences go out to the families of those who died, and my heartfelt wishes for recovery go to every person who was injured.
And to Officers Jakub Kulik and Artur Morański, the doctors, paramedics, firefighters, municipal guards, emergency dispatchers, Irish volunteers, and ordinary Kraków residents who responded with such extraordinary courage:
Thank you.
Thank you for your bravery. Thank you for your professionalism. Thank you for your humanity.
A city like Kraków is known around the world for its magnificent architecture, centuries of history, great universities, and remarkable cultural heritage. But buildings and monuments don’t make a city great.
People do.
On Saturday, November 7, Kraków suffered a terrible tragedy.
Yet in those same terrible minutes, the people of Kraków, together with strangers who happened to be there, showed us something truly remarkable about courage, responsibility, solidarity, and the human spirit.
I’ve been proud to call Poland home for 35 years.
After Saturday, I’m prouder still.
A personal reflection by John Lynch
Kraków, Poland — November 2026
John is an American entrepreneur, writer and public speaker who lives in Krakow, Poland. In 1992, he was one of the first expatriates to launch a start-up in Poland in the aftermath of the fall of communism – his company Lynka which he still heads today. He is Board Member and founder of the American Chamber of Commerce (Southern Poland) and Corporate Aid for Ukraine (CAU) charitable foundation. In May 2022, he appeared on CNN’s Smerconish to discuss the Polish humanitarian response to the war in Ukraine.
John is originally from New Jersey and has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Lehigh University and has an MBA from The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania. He lives near Krakow with his family.
