POLAND-2018

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Today we have a half day of sightseeing. Again it is a beautiful day, warm and sunny. Our driver takes us first through the city. Warsaw is really a beautiful city . There are many beautiful parks in the city. We drove first to Lazienki Park. This is a beautiful serene area. There was a large group doing yoga outside. The highlight of the park is the Palace on the Water. It is one of the finest examples of neoclassical architecture in Poland. Originally there was a bath-house on this location. The Polish king Stanislaw August Poniatowski converted this into a palace which has been fully restored, It sits on a beautiful lake. The Germans plundered the palace and then set it on fire. They drilled over 1000 holes in the walls with the intent of coming back and bowing it up. However the war ended before they could carry that out. The first two rooms are covered in beautiful tiles that were a part of the original bath-house. The rest of the palace is very ornate with beautiful parquet floors. The grounds are beautiful with flowers and lilac bushes.

We then drove back into the city and went to the Museum of the History of the Polish Jews (POLIN) This opened in 2014. This is a massive timeline of Jewish life in the region going back 1000 years. It does not focus on the holocaust but on the development of Jewish life and community. However the history of Jews in Poland has been troubling to say the least. Every conflict had hundreds or thousands of Jews killed. In Jedwabne a pogrom was carried out by the Christian inhabitants of the town and near-by towns. A group of Jewish men were first killed by the inhabitants and then all the rest of the Jews,250-300 women and children included were rounded up, put in a barn which was then set on fire. They were burned alive. The museum is very well done being a testament to the survival of a people.

The we came back we went to the Cafe Bristol for a bite to eat and something to drink. This has been a great trip. Today we walked 1.75 miles. A light walking day.

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