We went to the Museum for the Warsaw Uprising. It was a very intense museum. It was pretty dim inside and all the lights were aimed at the walls instead of directly down which made the exhibits stand out more. It was also very loud and chaotic inside. The Warsaw Uprising lasted for 63 days. There is a heartbeat sound playing throughout the museum that beats 63 times per second. A lot of the exhibits make sound - which on their own wouldn't be very loud, but all together, it creates this loud background noise. Also, all the aisles are cramped and narrow. It definitely gets a panicked mood across to the visitors, but it also makes it hard to concentrate on the exhibits.
Exhibit at Warsaw Uprising Museum
Arm badges of Polish resistance fighters
Messengers used sewers like these to bring messages between different sections of the ghetto and to escape from the ghetto. The sewers were over 13 miles long in some places and many died within because they couldn't make it the whole distance in the small space. Bodies were still being found inside in the 1960s.
Later, we visited the US Embassy. I swear, there was more security there than in the airport. Someone from the foreign service spoke to us about the embassy and their role in memorials for Holocaust-related events today. There are a lot of memorials in the next few years because the 70th anniversary of the end of the war is approaching. This January will mark 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. Next week will be the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising. The whole country will be celebrating for the 63 days. The first hour of the uprising is known as the W-hour. At 5 PM on August 1st (when the uprising started in 1944) the entire country will stop. Every alarm/siren in every city in the whole country will go off for 63 seconds in honor of the uprising.
Day 25 - Meeting the Chief Rabbi of Poland and Shabbat Dinner
We got to meet Rabbi Michael Schudrich who is the chief Rabbi of Poland (but he's from New York). It was really interesting to talk to him. We met in Nozyk Synagogue which is really nice inside. It is currently the only operating synagogue in Warsaw and was built in 1898.
Nozyk Synagogue
The night we had Shabbat dinner with a Jewish youth group called ZOOM. Because of WWII, a lot of Jewish Poles tried to hide the fact that they were Jewish. They continued to hide this while Poland was under communist control. Therefore, it wasn't until 1989 (almost 45 years after WWII ended) that many finally came out and told their neighbors and families that they actually had Jewish roots. ZOOM is a organization that helps young Polish people who have discovered they have Jewish roots to learn about being Jewish. Not being raised in a Jewish household, they have no idea about Jewish culture, but they want to learn about their families' religion.
Shabbat Dinner
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