Friday in Warsaw
Trip Start
Aug 31, 2008
1
23
37
Trip End
Oct 05, 2008
Warsaw,
Poland
Friday, September 19, 2008
We started a little later this morning, but opted not to have another disappointing breakfast in the hotel. Instead we went out to walk - and walk and walk. We started today walking down what one guidebook called "The Royal Route". Lots of churches, palaces & the University.
Actually the University was beautiful, even from under umbrellas. We had a sort of late breakfast at the University Bar. We had some pierogi - meat in a potato dumpling & boiled. Actually "meat" was the most conservative of fillings & we don't know what "meat"
Warsaw University
. They were OK but we won't be rushing to have them again. The menu in translation included dishes where we could choose between "cooked on lard", "cooked on pork fat" or "cooked on butter". There were also a variety of pancakes with cheese - seemed like the cheese was compulsory but you could choose what you wanted with it.
Anyway, as I say, it was cheap. And it was nice to get out of the rain & plan what to do next.
After "the Royal Route", we visited a lovely pedestrian plaza street with nice looking shops. We went there to see a good Polish handicrafts store. No purchases, but it was interesting to see.
Walking down that street, I spotted a window through which freshly baked somethings were being sold. Earlier David had been looking unsuccessfully for a pastry or something that didn't look tired, and the queue at this place looked promising. I said to David "join the queue, quick". He had no idea what the queue was for & wondered at my reaction - so I joined the queue while I explained, & told him to look to see if there was something pleasing there
Warsaw sightseeing
.As we stood there it smelt something like Krispy Kreme Donuts. In fact we have no real idea what we ended up with, but the dough tasted a bit like donut, although David's round one had some jam in it. Mine (croissant shaped) had chocolate flavoured something in it. In both cases we'd eaten almost half of it before we found any filling, but these were really good & really cheap. And the local popularity was encouraging.
A couple of brief explorings & then David spotted a large supermarket, so we went in to get tea bags & coffee sachets & crisps & ... a couple of other "stock up on's" before we leave Warsaw.
Next we hoped to walk through the "Academy of Science & Culture" - which was another Stalin-style-building such as we have taken to calling a Tower of Babel. Either that or something out of a King Kong movie. Anyway, as I say, we'd hoped to walk through to the other side but couldn't. I *think* this place had some sort of science museum - there was a poster about Albert Einstein - but it also had a theatre & a drama centre. It was a gift from Stalin to the Polish people. Had it been fine we would have done the obligatory tourist thing of going up in the lift there at sunset for a view over the city
Photo exhibition in park Poland 1930s
.All the available space there for this large Palace of Science & the motorway & the large plaza with wide open spaces for buses & trams - all this space was available because it was where the Jewish Ghetto stood during 1940-43, before the area was razed & all the inhabitants killed or deported. Knowing that many of the buildings had people hidden in it, the Germans burned every building "to do the job thoroughly".
The next part of our day was looking at the various reminders of that terrible part of history. We went hunting for a small part of the original brick ghetto wall left standing in a courtyard.
One street has been left unrenovated, as a reminder of those dark days - old brick buildings still with bullet holes. Now there is scaffolding covering where pedestrians walk through. At the end of the street, on the outside edge of the building, there are various portraits of some of the old & young who lived there.
I found it a chilling experience, but I guess it is just a fact of life & a throughway to many of the local residents
Palace of Science & Culture
.We hunted out the one synagogue that survived the war. Now it is being renovated so we couldn't go in. As we've seen elsewhere, there was a police van & a couple of police keeping an eye on the synagogue's safety.
Which reminds me that I forgot to mention how many police & guards we've seen here in Warsaw, mainly patrolling the streets of the Old & "New" Town, but also standing guard at various government buildings.
Anyway back to the old synagogue. As I say, we couldn't go in. We were cold & wet & had walked a long long way so I suggested a café stop, should we find one, just to get out of the weather. Around the corner we found a little café called "Shalom". Inside we were the only customers initially, although a young man & later a young woman came in after us.
This café was decorated like something out of a time warp. Inside you might have thought you were in an old Jewish theatre restaurant or coffee shop. There were various old instruments & photos, a menorah ... I took some photos (mainly before any other customers came in) & I had a really excellent cup of coffee & David had a pot of tea. A couple of the photos had a story under them in English.
As I say, it was a serendipitous find. I just wanted to get out of the rain & here we found this lovely little place.
Next we visited the Jewish Historical Institute
Aerial view over Palace of Science & Culture
. This contains a museum dedicated to the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw & what it was like & what happened to its inhabitants. We'd read that there was a period film of life in the ghetto & we asked to see it. Downstairs we were told it was possible. When we reached the area upstairs the woman attendant tried to tell us that it was too late to see it - the museum closed at 4 & it was now 3. If we saw the 40 min film we wouldn't have time to view the museum. We tried to say, that's OK, we understand that - we still want to see the film. In the end another visitor to the museum acted as interpreter for us with the guide - persuading her to show us the film.
Sounds like they were originally Polish, now living in America. The old man said to me - we've already seen the film once & came back to show the "kids" - the "kids" probably being in their 40s. One of the "kids" said to us, "you really should see the film if you see nothing else here". And we did.
It was obviously intended to be shocking and it was. Various inhabitants of the ghetto had filmed & also collected letters etc & stored them safely in urns, so they had survived. There were stories of people being rounded up & the ghetto walls being built
Shalom cafe
. Some happy lives continuing initially but more stories of poverty & the cold taking its toll.Our TV news etc, while it intends to be shocking, still largely protects us from seeing dead bodies - unless it is perhaps mass graves. There were lots of bodies shown in this film - people who had died of starvation or disease. Emaciated bodies being picked up & put into carts. Living children next to a dead mother. You couldn't help but weep to see it.
A very few were wealthy enough to still initially be living "the high life", just contained within the ghetto walls at first. After a time, news started coming through to the Warsaw Ghetto that all the inhabitants of other Polish ghettos were being killed. They knew what was coming. Many were starving & suffering frostbite.
Then people started being rounded up & taken away. 300,000 were in the ghetto originally. When the number got down to 35,000 overtly still living there (and a similar number hidden in basements), they decided that it was better to go down fighting. Open fighting began against the Germans. In the end, all were killed or deported, and, as I say, buildings burned to catch anyone hiding
Inside Shalom cafe
.At the end of the film we had about 15 mins to look quickly around the photos & stories in the museum. I hadn't realised, but about 1,700 Christians were living in the area that became the Ghetto - as well as their 2 churches - they fared no better than the Jewish inhabitants.
Another point that moved me, was that when the Ghetto Rising happened, there were also bullets being shot at the Germans from the "Aryan" side of the brick ghetto wall - Polish resistance fighters trying to help.
3 million Polish Jews were killed during WW2. Of the 300,000 living in Warsaw in 1939, only 30,000 survived the war - 5,000 in Germany & 25,000 in USSR.
Every time I see more of all this I think - I can't understand it. I cannot understand how so many Germans did these brutalities. Is it just that we don't hear about anyone who refused? OK, they were ordered to empty the ghetto - but why burn all the buildings to kill anyone hiding there?
I guess I can understand some bullies or even some madmen (especially amongst those ordering the actions). But how could anyone with a conscience obey such an order? Some might have done the things they were ordered to. But what of eg the clip we saw where some Germans were standing talking, then went over & beat some Jews to death, and then went back to their cigarettes?
I know some people did risk their lives to save Jews, and I know that Hitler also wanted to eradicate Poles & Slavs, but just the brutality that went on - I cannot comprehend the mentality
Vanished customers from Shalom cafe
.I'd already told you how we were struck that the Lithuanian version of history almost glossed over or ignored the German occupation. Well our experience in Poland has been almost the opposite - lots of tales of German attrocities but we have read little of the years under the Communists. Yes about Solidarity & Lech Walesa & Pope John Paul II, but quite a different story to the Baltic countries we have visited recently.
Maybe some of it is due to the unifying Catholicism of the Poles - in the Baltic countries there were Jews & Catholics & Russian Orthodox - and the Russians destroyed churches or turned them into museums, but here that does not seem to have happened (or at least as much).
After the museum, David had almost had enough, but there were a couple of memorials I wanted to see. We saw the Monument to the Heroes of the Ghetto.
We found Pawiak - built in the 1830s it was a political prison, used for incarcerating enemies of the Tsar. During WW2 it was the Gestapo's main prison facility. 100,000 people passed through its gates - 37,000 were shot there, over 60,000 were deported from there
Part of Jewish Ghetto wall
.The guard was preparing to lock the gate when David arrived (ahead of me, back taking photos) & signalled that if we were quick we were to be allowed in. Another sad place, not only for Jews. Amongst photos & individual life stories there were lots of translated poems or stories from people who had been through there. Outside there was the prison yard, against which concrete wall many were executed.
As I say, we saw plenty of disturbing images today, and I was not the only one with tears flowing during the ghetto film.
Couple that with a day that was grey & raining all day, and also a day that we walked many miles. David did an amazing job of navigating our day - including a couple of trams this afternoon & finally a bus back to our area at the end of the day.
We came in to our room hugely relieved to take shoes off for a while, before we went out briefly for dinner, just to the Polish restaurant around the corner from our hotel. We wanted to have Polish style food, and we did. It was OK, but high on fats & starch
Ul. Prozna (preserved street from ghetto)
.Yesterday when we were at the Royal Castle (almost next to our window remember) they were in the process of setting up a huge marquee & lots of chairs in the open space in the middle of the castle. Tonight we've seen trucks arriving & now we can sometimes hear choirs singing. No idea what is the event but we are enjoying what we hear.
Tomorrow morning we leave Warsaw with Chris for western Poland. There are a few large museums & a huge art gallery here that we never had time to visit. Plus there are a few castles in parks, including the one we attended the Chopin concert last night. The weather wasn't conducive to walking in parks any more than we already did, and we have seen a number of art & historical museums.
However, although we've been a bit short of time wherever we've been this trip, really another couple of days could have been well spent in Warsaw. Having said that, we've seen & done a lot.
In Poznan & Leszno my priority is trying to learn something about how & where my ancestors lived. If I see or do any of the tourist sites, well that is just bonus. I think David is happy with this priority for the next few days as well. We are both looking forward to being able to talk to and learn from Chris the sorts of things we couldn't pick up just walking through museums or reading books.
And now after 2 very late nights I am exhausted & needing an earlier night tonight.
From Kerry & David in Warsaw
