Under the shadow of the Palace of Culture and Science I passed now into what was once the Jewish ghetto area.
There is very little to see there of historical significance, the whole area was completely obliterated and razed to the ground by the Nazis and it is now a thriving modern business area with metal and glass skyscrapers that compete architecturally and wide boulevards carving their way to and from the city centre; very different to the Warsaw suburb that became the ghetto in 1940.
Some friends and family have questioned why I would want to go there at all and my explanation is that I thought that it was important. This is a place where something dreadful happened, a place that perfectly illustrates man’s inhumanity to man and I felt that I needed to go there, breathe the air and walk on the ground where all of this happened. It is not a place to go to go and see anything, it is a place to go for a personal almost spiritual experience.
In 2008 I went to Auschwitz concentration camp for much the same reason.
Not everyone likes these stories so I will keep it short. In pre war Warsaw one third of the population (350,000) were Jews and Poland was a reasonably religiously tolerant country compared to other European countries at the time.
Within a year of occupation the Jews of Warsaw were forced to relocate into an area west of the Vistula which represented just about 5% of the total area of the city – a third of the population in just 5% of the city. They were treated appallingly, one hundred thousand died of disease and starvation and finally the survivors were moved out and murdered in the death camps. By 1945 there were no Jews in Warsaw. You can easily read about it elsewhere if you want to.
I walked the streets and sought out what small reminders there are – a piece of the ghetto wall, the footbridge of memory, a plaque, a monument, a statue but, as I said, there is very little to see.
I was making my way now to another museum, the museum of the Warsaw Uprising. It was quite a walk, much further than I was expecting and as I got close I worried that it might be closed on a Sunday. Luckily it was open for business and even better than that, entrance was free!
This turned out to be a very good museum indeed which deals in general with the war years but specifically with the 1944 Warsaw uprising. It might be surprising to some people but in 1939 Poland fielded the third biggest Allied Army and despite defeat and occupation they never stopped fighting. Unfortunately they were ultimately let down by the Allied leaders Roosevelt, Churchill and especially Stalin. Because they were not recognised as an official allied army this meant that the conventions of war did not apply to captured soldiers and prisoners and many were caught and executed. Eventually Roosevelt insisted that they be officially recognised in a belated attempt to stop the atrocities.
In 1944 the Free Polish army rose up against the Germans in expectation of support from the advancing Red Army. The support never came. The Russians stopped their advance short of the River Vistula and cynically allowed the uprising to be quashed with devastating loss of life when an estimated quarter of a million Polish civilians and soldiers were killed. When it was all over Hitler carried out his plan to destroy the city.
The Polish army officers that survived and took their units into the countryside to continue fighting were eventually rounded up by the Russians, forced to disarm and sent east to Russian labour camps. The Russians were not good allies even then it seems. Warsaw and Poland rid itself of one evil regime of occupation and found itself saddled with another that was just as bad.
What the Germans did was inexcusable, they came as open aggressors, what the Russians did was abominable, they came as fake liberators!
I spent a couple of reflective hours around the museum and believe me it is difficult not to feel guilt and shame in almost equal proportions.
It was getting dark when I left and I thought about getting a taxi back to the hotel but then I came to my senses, I hate wasting money on taxis, so I set out to walk the two or three kilometres back to the Polonia Palace. It took me about half an hour and when I got back Kim was off to the spa for a massage so I opened a bottle of wine and reflected on my day.
I thought about walking out and booking a table in a restaurant but I had done enough walking already and I was reasonably certain that there would be no problem tonight so as quickly as the thought entered my head I let it go again and decided to take a chance. Sometimes I just like the whiff of danger and the experience of living life on the edge!
Just as I thought there was no problem tonight, the Valentine’s day frenzy was over and we found an authentic Polish restaurant tucked down a back street and we enjoyed the sort of Polish cuisine that we had hoped for the previous night. It was so good that without consultation we both knew that we would be returning here again the next night.
Reblogged this on By the Mighty Mumford and commented:
GOOD TO REMEMBER ABOUT.
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Good restaurants anywhere, anytime are hard to resist.
What was the meal you liked so much?
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I had a traditional Polish soup (which was a meal by itself) followed by half a roast duck and a bottle of Polish beer!
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Now I’m curious which soup you call traditional. Do you recall?
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It was a white sausage and dumpling soup
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Mmm. My mother never made that one. Sounds good! Thank you for filling me in. 🙂
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I agree Andrew there is importance in visiting and reflecting on the atrocities of mankind. Perhaps it keeps our hearts more open and kinder.
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I remember a professor at University saying that the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing!
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The buildings might be new, but the air must be filled with a lingering dread.
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Hard to shake off I imagine!
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Whilst I know quite a lot about the last war, I hadn’t really appreciated the extent of the Russian attitude towards the Poles….
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Sixteen million Polish people died during the war. Post 1945 thousands more were imprisoned, murdered or sent to Russian labour camps. Thanks for the comment.
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The Poles have no love for the Germans, but they despise the Russians, and who can blame them, Andrew? I enjoyed your thoughtful post and it’s a museum that I, too, would like to have seen. If I ever go back I’ll ask you for the name of that restaurant. 🙂
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I looked this up and was surprised to find that the two countries with the highest tourist numbers to Poland are Germany and Russia, UK comes third. An interesting fact I thought.
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Stranger than fiction! 🙂
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I was surprised by that. I suppose German visits can be explained because until 1945 much of what is now west Poland used to be Germany. I am struggling to explain the high number of Russian visitors bearing in mind how unpopular they are there!
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I was always very interested in learning about WW2 as a child, but my parents were rather reluctant (for some reason) to allow me the watch “The World At War” on TV. I went on to do History ‘O’ Level but never touched on the subject of what Germany and Russia did to Warsaw and Poland.
I can imagine just how sad anybody would feel when actually seeing the small bits of the city which are still left from pre war days.
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My dad was full of war stories but they were always about commandos and daring bombing raids and desert rats. I doubt he knew anything at all about the war in the east. ‘World at War’ is currently being repeated on Channel 4 in the afternoons.
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Thanks, Andew. I did not know it was being repeated. I’ll check it out on the iPlayer. It will certainly bring back lots of memories from the time I watched it as a child.
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One of the best museums I have ever visited. On a very similar theme, Terezin near Prague and Yad Vashem featuring the ghetto in Lodz, in Jerusalem are also harrowing experiences I have been to. Wilbur.
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Thanks for the comment. I thought it was an excellent museum, I could have spent a whole day there!
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Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin have a lot to answer for and most of all for giving Stalin the status he enjoyed while murdering masses – by numbers worse than Holocaust. Countries like Poland – that suffered first from Nazi occupation then from communist regimes are amazing in how they slowly dig out of those gutters and muster courage in creating a brighter future. Great post, Andrew
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I read an article recently that tried to calculate who was personally responsible for more deaths and murders i.e. by direct order. Stalin was an easy winner!
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No one in the UK will have a word said against Churchill of course but I guarantee that one day his role in the war will be re-evaluated and it will not enhance his iconic reputation.
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There’s an old saying in Croatia: “Politics is Martha, and Martha is a whore” 🙂 perhaps she’ll get “rehabilitated” one day – not holding my breath, though 🙂
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Very interesting post – I studied history to uni level and what happened in Warsaw and Poland is terrible beyond belief (like so many other things in the 2nd World War). I also feel it’s important to visit such places to reflect and pay respects if that’s the right way of putting it. I am fascinated by any museum too!
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The sad thing is that there are so many places where dreadful things happened and continue even today.
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Yes I know it seems lessons are not learnt from history at all so sad.
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When we learn about WWII in our history classes, the US is often depicted as the hero of the story. It’s good to read about and remember the others who fought and sacrificed in WWII. I hope I can get to Poland someday to check out that museum. Great post!
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That is an interesting point. I went to Russia in 2012 and they are in no doubt that they are the heroes of the war. In the UK we think it is Winston Churchill.
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If you haven’t read it already, there’s an excellent book on WW II (excellent research and well written).
“Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin”
by Timothy Snyder
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Poland explains its dreadful war experience so well in its museums. You may not know the one in Gdansk as it’s only two or three years old. Seeing their take on those parts of the war with which we’re more familiar – the London blitz for instance – was interesting, but not so much as their own harrowing story.
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I haven’t been to Gdansk but it is on my list.
People need to visit the east to really understand the war, much more vicious than the western front.
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Yes indeed. Our holiday in Poland was salutary, but not exactly carefree.
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Although I knew about the Polish fighting, I had no idea about the size of their army. There is a Polish War Graves cemetery in Newark, which you may know.
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Poland has the geographical misfortune of being squeezed in between volatile and aggressive neighbours.
I have visited the cemetery in Newark.
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It has. I thought you would have
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Thanks, Andrew, an important story that we need to be reminded of over and over. If people dislike hearing it, too bad. –Curt
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Thanks Curt.
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Excellent post, Andrew! I had a Polish uncle but he was only a very young child during the war. His family were Jewish but they had converted to Roman Catholicism some time before the war. They managed to get my uncle out of Poland after the war and he came to England, studied here and married my aunt. He died 12 years ago.
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There are so many good stories of Polish people living in the UK. Makes me sad about leaving Europe.
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Me too, Andrew! I have a Maltese aunt as well.
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Malta, probably my favourite place in the Mediterranean.
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I think that museums are perfect places to talk about difficult subjects. They should be safe places for learning, discussion and reflection on all kinds of matters and hopefully we can think more critically about the facts that have shaped our current reality. They say that history gets written by the victors and I say that history is never fixed, it’s always open to research and further interpretation and learning is a lifelong endeavour.
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Good points, thanks for adding them to the post.
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