Exploring Warsaw

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We spent the day walking around the Old City, the Jewish Ghetto, and the Warsaw Ghetto Museum. We started the day off going around the outline of where the ghetto was; our first stop was in an old apartment complex that had part of the wall still running through the middle of it. Our group had divided ourselves onto each side of the wall with me and one other person in middle without realizing what we were doing. We each had our own reaction once our guide told us where we were standing. Standing as the wall created feelings that are hard to describe. It was weird to be the thing that divides people into two groups while representing so much. I represented hate, ignorance, unjustness, sadness, isolation, and all things associated with the holocaust. It was not something I felt comfortable representing. From there we went to a couple of beautiful synagogues and a Jewish cemetery. The memorials we visited commemorated the courage of some of the resisters in Warsaw and it was encouraging to know that there were good people in the area at that time. The old town was beautiful (I have decided that every old town is just wonderful) and made me kind of like Warsaw.
The Warsaw Ghetto Museum was really cool but we did not have enough time there to see everything. They had a massive amount of weapons from the war that was pretty impressive. One of the coolest things was the giant airplane in the middle of the museum. My friend Kelsey and I went down to the bottom floor of the museum and spent most of our time there. We walked through a miniature tunnel (where she freaked out most of the time) that represented the underground tunnel. It was intriguing. We then spent like 10-15 minutes watching an interview with an old German military officer where he described his involvement and memories from the war. He talked about how he did a lot of things that he was not proud of like blow up the hospital where his brother was staying and random beatings to strangers on the sidewalk. He talked about his memories of watching a young girl get decapitated and the kindness of a priest who allowed the soldier and his comrade take communion and who prayed them in the middle of a battle. It was hard to watch his interview because you could feel the shame that he has felt throughout the rest of his life. We then had pretty well run out of time so we went through the rest of the museum collecting pamphlets of the rest of the information.
Three of us felt like eating really bad for you American food so we went to the Burger King across the street and came back to the hotel room and had a heart-to-heart for a few hours.

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