Allison Abroad: Day 21 - Warsaw, Poland

Day 21 - Jewish Cemetery, Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and Walking Tour of Old Town Warsaw

For our first full day in Warsaw, we visited a lot of sites of historical significance. Our first stop was the Jewish Cemetery. It is the largest Jewish Cemetery in Europe and is one of the oldest. Many of the graves date back to the early 1800's. There is a mass grave for victims of the ghetto as well as several memorials: one for the children victims of the Warsaw Ghetto and one for Janusz Korczak who died in order to try to protect the children in the ghetto.

Janusz Korczak founded an orphanage for Jewish children before the war. While in the ghetto, he continued to help the children. We was actually given the choice to leave the ghetto, but he refused unless he could bring children with him. He was refused. This statue depicts him marching with the children to be deported. He died in Treblinka.

Memorial to the children of the Warsaw Ghetto

Most of the Jewish cemetery was destroyed in WWII. The Nazis used the broken tombstones as stones for walkways. After the war, these broken stones were placed in the wall of the cemetery.

Memorial for a mass burial site of the ghetto

Afterwards, we visited the Museum of the History of the Polish Jews. The exhibit is not yet open (it will be in November) and even the temporary exhibit will not be open until the end of the week. However, we were able to enter the building and learn about how the exhibit is going to be set up. It looks really interesting and should be really educational.

The architecture of the museum is very different. The walls are smooth and rounded and are supposed to look like when Moses parted the Red Sea.

Reconstructed roof of synagogue inside. This is the only part of the exhibit that is visible as of yet (it is so large that you can see it from the lobby)

Map of exhibit that is under construction

In the afternoon, we went on a tour of the Old Town in Warsaw. Warsaw is without a doubt one of the prettiest towns I have seen. There were all these outdoor cafes and old buildings lining the streets. Most of the town was destroyed during the war, but it has been restored to look like how it did before.

Palace of Science and Culture

This is the only palm tree in Warsaw...and it is plastic. The leaves used to be longer but there was a hurricane and they were damaged. The new ones ordered from China were made to be shorter to try and prevent the same damage from happening again. So they ended up changing the species of palm tree.

Statue of Nicolaus Copernicus

Frederic Chopin's heart is buried in this church

These benches memorialize Chopin and play his music while you sit on them. There are several placed around Warsaw in places where he lived, worked, and played.