Day of Melancholy and Good Cheer

Wednesday is a half-day at the American School in Warsaw. My morning was filled with 7th graders and my afternoon with rain and history.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic They all read FEVER 1793.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic Their teacher heard me speak at HalfWay Down the Stairs, outside Detroit, a couple of years ago. ‘Tis a small world, indeed.

I was honored to spend the afternoon with Adam, the guy who teaches Polish at the school. He is Polish, born and bred, and an expert on the history of Warsaw. He also studied Anglo-Saxon and Celtic languages so as we drove into the heart of the city, we had a wonderful linguistic-geek conversation.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic The tour started at the library of the University of Warsaw. It’s a new building, designed to combine nature into the architecture, hence the plants and skylights everywhere.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic The roof doubles as a park with a terrific view of the city. Here you can see exhaust fans from the ventilation system surrounded by garden.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic The skyline has buildings from the 19th-century, from the 1930s pre-war building boom, the scars of the WWII when the Nazis systematically destroyed most of the city, the Soviet era, with Stalinesque buildings, and the current building frenzy. The buildings of Warsaw offer a Braille text to the city’s history.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic The history of Warsaw and Poland is filled with invasions and oppression. That the Poles survived with their language, cultural, and spirit intact is an incredible testimony to their strength and wonderful stubborness. Recently, some artists have started to inject some whimsy into Warsaw, to help counterbalance the legacy of darkness. If you squint, you’ll see sculptures of three pink elk on the riverbank. Just because.

In 1940, the Germans established the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw and forced the city’s half-million Jews to live in it. (Please read the linked article for the details – you really need to know about this.) After years of being treated horribly – starved, attacked, murdered, and every atrocity you can imagine – members of a resistance movement in the Ghetto decided they had to fight back. On April 19, 1943 (yes, that was 64 years ago today), the Jews fought back. It was called the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

They didn’t have a chance. But they fought back for a month, choosing to die fighting instead of in a gas chamber. There were a half million Jews in Warsaw at the beginning of WWII – the largest population outside of New York City. By the end of the war, they had all been killed. Today, 2000 Jews live here.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic This is one of the exterior walls of the Jewish Cemetary, where it touched the Ghetto. Pretty much all of the buildings in the Ghetto (which was huge) were completely destoyed on Hitler’s orders after the Ghetto Uprising.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic This is the memorial to Jan Korczak, an author, educator and pediatrician who revolutionized the way children were viewed, and who cared for hundreds of orphans in the Ghetto until the Nazis murdered all of them.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic A memorial to the one million children who were killed by the Nazis.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic Close-up of the memorial.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic This is the Umschlagplatz in the Ghetto, where the Jews were herded onto railway cars and sent to be slaughtered at concentration camps. Chilling. Horrifying. Actually, I am fairly wordless about the experience.

We also went to the Jewish Cemetary, a city of the dead, where a quarter-million are buried. I am still processing how this affected me. The pictures are in my head forever.

Image and video hosting by TinyPic As if that wasn’t enough, we also talked about the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, when the Poles in the whole city rose up against the Germans. This is a memorial to that event. The Poles thought that the Russians, camped across the river, would come to their aid, the way the Allied troops helped the people of Paris. The Russians did not help. The Germans then crushed the city, destroying most of the buildings and killing thousands.

Yes, this was all very heavy and sobering material. Adam and I drank coffee and ate a bagel and talked for hours after. I came away with the deepest respect for Poland.

5 Replies to “Day of Melancholy and Good Cheer”

  1. These pictures and the true history behind them are absolutely incredible Laurie. In today’s world, we should all be so lucky to have the experience you’ve had so we can learn from it and become a more nurturing society that factors in the human element with every decision we make.

    Big Sister Quirk

    P.S. If you have anything orange or maroon in your luggage, everyone is encouraged to wear it tomorrow (4/20) in honor of the VT victims.

  2. Very moving pictures.

    I noticed there were a lot of pebbles on the children memorial. Not sure if you knew, but in Jewish tradition we put stones on memorials and graves as a sign of respect instead of flowers because stones are constant and will not die. I thought you might find that interesting.

  3. thank you

    WOW
    I am currently teaching The Diary of Anne Frank in my classes and we have been talking about so many of the events related to the Holocaust. I am planning on showing these pictures on the projector tomorrow in class. I was really moved by the images and hopefully my students will too. SO, thank you so much for sharing the photos.

  4. Yes, we talked about that. In the cemetary itself, there were many graves that had pebbles on them. It was quite moving.

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