Days 24-25 - Warsaw, Poland

Day 24 - Warsaw Uprising Museum and US Embassy

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

Days 22-23 - Warsaw, Poland

Day 22 - Forum for Dialogue Among Nations, Hejt Stop, and the Memory March

We visited the Forum for Dialogue Among Nations which is a group that works to educate middle school children in small towns in Poland about the Jewish History of their own towns.  Many of the kids have no idea.  They have a four day workshop in which they learn about the history and begin to plan a project.  They talk to their grandparents and other town officials.  Many of the grandparents are surprised because this is the first time that anyone has asked them about their Jewish neighbors.  Some schools have planned guided tours to show people the Jewish buildings and cemeteries in the town.  Other groups have made information booklets for the town hall to give out to visitors.  They clean up the Jewish cemeteries.  I was really impressed with the group and all they have accomplished.  It was rather sad to realize that the children in these towns have no idea about the Jewish history of their own town despite the formerly large Jewish population because their really aren't any Jewish people left living there.  Another thing this group does is work to bring people from other countries, whose families used to live in Poland, back to the towns where their parents or grandparents grew up.  They showed a video of one boy from New York who had his Bar Mitzvah at the synagogue in the town where his grandfather was born.  It was the first Bar Mitzvah in the town in 75 years.

We also visited another group called Hejt Stop (Hate Stop).  Their mission is to remove anti-Semitic graffiti from around Warsaw (and the rest of Poland but they are based in Warsaw).  People who see this hate speech on walls and buildings can take a picture and upload it to their website.  Hejt Stop gets in contact with the local authorities, building owners, and administrators about covering it up.  They have had public events where people in the community help to cover up the hate speech.

That night we participated in the Memory March for the 72nd Anniversary of the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto (July 22, 1942).  There were a lot of people marching.  Everyone was given a white tag to wear that had someone's name on it who was once in the ghetto.  At the end, people tied them all on to this large structure.  The march was dedicated to Emanuel Ringelblum who buried the archives of the Warsaw ghetto so that the Nazis would not be able to destroy them and so that people in the future would know what went on in the ghetto.

This marks where the former walls of the ghetto were

Memory March

Walls from the Warsaw Ghetto

People tying their name tags to the structure

 

Day 23 - Jewish Historical Institute

We visited the Jewish Historical Institute.  He were able to meet with the director who told us about the founding of the institute.  He brought us into the archives where we could see some original documents.  We also watched a (very depressing) video about the Warsaw ghetto and the conditions there.

The structure from the march yesterday

Postcard thrown out the window of a train to Auschwitz.  The top right has and address and the top left is a plea for someone to mail the card.  The bottom is translated below. (Second section from December 1942)

Map of Warsaw Ghetto

Documents of people applying to not be sent to the ghetto and of people who survived the war

Simcha Guterman left records on toilet paper that he buried in a bottle before escaping the ghetto.  He was later killed in the uprising.  The records were found years later when the house he once lived in was being renovated.

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.

Chopin's house

Church where Chopin gave his first concert at age 7

One of two hotels in Warsaw that survived WWII (Hotel Bristol)

Warsaw Presidential Palace

Oldest church in Warsaw; built in 1370

Market Square in Old Town

Old Town Walls

Marie Curie's house. Many people don't realize that she was actually born and raised in Poland.

Warsaw Uprising Memorial

Warsaw Uprising Memorial

Symbol of Polish Resistance Groups

Sunset in Warsaw