Last Day in Warsaw

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(Oops! Thought this was posted already, but so busy when I got home that I didn't have time to check. Sorry about it being a week late....)

Good morning! Well, we had another amazing breakfast at the Polonia Palace Hotel, then boarded the bus (another small van like bus) for our second day in Warsaw. Our “city guide” was Yolanta who comes from a town about an hour away, but now lives in Warsaw. She began guiding after she finished university. (By the way, university education is free in Poland).

We did the general Polish touring in the morning, starting at Lazienski Park. The “L” letter actually has a line through it - and it’s pronounced as a “w” sound. For example, the city we know as Lodz is actually pronounced “Wodzh.” Anyway, we walked through the park. One of the first stops was at the statue of Chopin with a weeping willow part of the sculpture leaning over toward him. The original sculpture was taken apart in small pieces at the very start of the German occupation. The Germans hated Chopin and his Polish music based on Polish folk melodies. The statue was put up again after the war. It was surrounded by hundreds of identical rose bushes.

We continued through the park past the “underwater palace” which was the king’s place. A manmade lake was created in front of it, making it look like Venice. We finally found a beech tree for Marlowe (the beech tree lover). We heard about the kings’ wife who was not the “queen” because she was not high enough born, but lived in her own small palace/house with her children. It was fun for some of the group to see the piano being wheeled out of the palace where the night before they had attended a Chopin concert. We also saw the outside of the orangerie built to try and grow orange trees in Poland back a century or two ago.

We then continued on the bus along the avenue with all the consulates, arriving at Old Town. We walked through and then saw the outside fortifications for the original Warsaw. We walked past a photo exhibit that showed scenes from destroyed Warsaw, then a modern photo of the same spot, and then a combined photo of one superimposed on the other. You can see it at www.miastofeniksa.pl

In Old Town she explained about the destruction of Warsaw by the Germans, a reinforcement of what we learned at the Warsaw Uprising Museum the day before.

We continued to the monument for the heroes of the Warsaw Uprising - the army organized by the Polish Home Army. Their symbol was a “P” with an anchor below. It was beautiful, with the judicial building behind it all in glass with quotes about human rights.

We then headed over to the Jewish Cemetery. It was huge, with many trees growing among the tombstones. We saw a depressed circle area surrounded by simple small stones - marking the area of mass graves. As Jews died in the Nazi controlled Warsaw ghetto - their bodies were taken to this spot and buried. Names were unknown - there were so many thousands upon thousands. Some 100,000 died in the ghetto. (And another 300,000 were sent to their deaths.) At the cemetery there was a memorial put up by Jack Eisner - one of the only survivors of the Ghetto Uprising. He has a book about his experience called “The Survivor.” We also saw the grave of the head of the Jewish community in Warsaw who was told to sign the order for the first deportation to Treblinka. He was so conflicted, and could not do it: so he committed suicide that night. Next to this was another famous grave: for Zamenhof, the Jew who invented Esperanto.

There was also a memorial to Janusz Korczak (Henryk Goldsmith), the great educator who ran orphanages. We lit a yarzeit candle and said Kaddish.

We then took a lunch break at the nearby mall. There was a cafeteria type place upstairs there, and we had a wonderful meal! Like home cooked! Peter, of course, got some ice cream too.

Then we went on to our tour of the Warsaw ghetto. We saw the plaza with a memorial to those who died in the ghetto. They are going to be building a special national museum dedicated to the 1000 year history of Jews in Poland. The sign is up and the place marked. We took a photo of the memorial there. We also saw a small marker that was a memorial to the Zabota: the Polish group who were dedicated to assisting and saving Jews from the Warsaw ghetto. Next, we went on to other parts of the former ghetto - of which just about nothing is left standing. It was completely destroyed and pulled down by the Nazis. There is only a small piece of the original wall left, in the courtyard of a small apartment complex. We saw it. We stopped at Mila 18, the street location where Mordechai Anelewicz (spelling?) had the headquarters in the basement from which to direct the Ghetto Uprising. At the end, knowing they would all be captured and killed by the Nazis, he and about 100 others in this “bunker” killed themselves to show they were in control of their own lives.

Other sites of the ghetto: the spot where the bridge connected the small and large ghetto areas until all the people from the small ghetto were crowded into the large ghetto. And following the walk to the Umshlagplatz - the site where Jews were forced on to trains to Treblinka, the death camp.

There was so much more. What a day.

We ended with return to the hotel and some of us sitting in the bar discussing the high and low points of the tour. The low were not things that did not work out (we had some of those too) - but the depressing parts. Going to Birkenau was the lowest point for many; for some it was the museum in Budapest with its very personalized images.

And for highlights: the Shabbat evening with the Warsaw progressive Jewish community; the bike ride (Marty and Wendy L.) around Warsaw; the Chopin concert; the birthday drink in Krakow; the gelato in Prague; the artists’ work on display in Terezin. Sitting and having a beer in the square in Budapest with musicians around. The slow ride on the Danube. The wonderful meals and conversations with the others from the group. The bison grass vodka. (We drank a bit more of it...well, maybe more than a bit....while we sat in the bar. The women had the vodka/apple juice specialty of Poland while the men worked on the beers.)

And, the more important reaction at the end of the tour, as Wendy L says: I feel enormously grateful that my grandparents came over (to the United States) before all of this.

Well, now it’s 5:30 pm on Sunday. I’m going to try to get online and send this, and then we are off to our closing dinner. Tomorrow it’s a 6:30 am departure: we fly from here to Prague and then on to JFK.

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