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Published: August 22nd 2006
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Old Town
Just outside of the Royal Palace Getting to Poland was a relief. There were restaurants, people who spoke a little bit of english and more things that seemed like a normal city. I arrived reasonabley late so just had enough time for dinner. There is a street called Nowy Swiat which has a great selection of cafés and bars which also looked very nice.
The next day I headed back up Nowy Swiat to the Old Town. In 1980 the Warsaw old town was put on the UNESCO World Heritage list and for good reason. It is a remarkable place. What is more remarkable is the fact that after WWII, and astonishing 85%!p(MISSING)ercent of the city was completely obliterated. Over the next 10 years, the entire city was rebuilt in a stunning display of Polish national pride. There are many public areas in the city that have photographs on display showing the city as it was bomded and how it has been rebuilt. One quote written in such an area I liked was
The sense of responsibility towards the future generations tells us to rebuild what has been distoyed
They take pride in thier city and even today there are things being built, renovated.
An interesting place is the Warsaw Historical Museum. With it's very sqeaky floor and many
levels, it shows the entire history of the city as well as a 20 minute film on the period during the war. It was kind of harrowing to see the streets I had just walked down lying in rubble and how much they have changed since.
The next day I headed out to see the Jewish Ghetto but there was a problem. The hostel I'm staying at closes from 10am to 4pm and there is no way to get back in. It just so happened that I left my camera in the room so I was without my camera for the day, I felt so naked. When I did manage to retrieve it, the sky was grey and rain fell hard. However it wasn't a complete loss, I managed to organise a few things and take care of some correspondence.
Just the the north east of the centre is the former Jewish Ghetto. Steven Spielburg's Schindler's List and Roman Polanski's The Pianist are set in the Jewish Ghetto's of Warsaw. I saw the Pawiak Prison Museum which was once a gestapo prison now a moving museum. There was also a few monuments in the area. Walking around where
the Ghetto once was is kind of strange, it's hard to imagine that this quaint little area was the site of so much death and horror.
I then caught the sparkling clean (as in, you could almost eat off the floor) metro system to the Palace of Culture and Science. This is the highest building in Warsaw and a symbol of the city. However, don't tell any locals you like it as they hate it for a different reason than it's looks. It was a "gift" (you know, one of those non-returnable gifts) from Stalin to the people of Poland as a sign of friendship (or soviet rule). In the building is various things like cinemas, performance areas etc.. but I was there to see the Museum of Technology. To be honest it was a little dissapointing but there was one interesting artifact that caught my attention, the Enigma Machine. Any historian or history enthusiast will be able to tell you of the importance of this code writing machine used by the Nazis in WWII. It was quite a treat to see one in the flesh... as it were.
I had spent around 4 days in Warsaw and
very much enjoyed it. It took me by surprise how nice the city actually is and I didn't really want to leave... untill I saw Kraków. As soon as I arrived and wandered the streets of Kraków I thought to myself "Forget Warsaw!"
Kraków is a beautiful place. I have a Polish friend back in Olney who said that if he HAD to return to Poland, he would live in Kraków and I could see why. Once the ancient capital, Kraków's old town reminds me a little of Prague but with the largest medieval town square in europe. The best thing about Kraków is that it somehow escaped the devastating nazi bombing during WWII so many of it's old buildings remain. I think it's fair to say that after Stockholm, Kraków is my favourite city on the trip so far. The problem with my opinion is that everyone shares it and there are tourists everywhere! (I am aware of the irony of being a tourist and complaining about them so no need to point that out) Even through the thick crowds you can still wander deserted tight winding cobblestone streets and hear the echoes of horses clip clopping past.
Pictures of the past
One of the many public displays I took a trip out to the town known as Oświęcim. Most outsiders don't know it but they know it's history. It is home to the biggest of the Nazi consentration camps Auschwitz. There was a tour running from the hostel that the lady tried to get me to go on but I refused. I am not big on tours at the best of times but I especially didn't want to be hearded around like a tourist on grounds that were the scene of the deaths of at least 1.1 million human beings. I cringe at the sight of tourist bus after tourist bus in the car park as I approach the front gate. I am surprised and pleased to learn that it is free entry if your not part of a guided tour so I stroll on through. I approach the famous front gate that reads "Arbeit Mach Frei" I wonder how many people who were prisoners there agreed with that statement.
Walking around the area is not as horrible I thought. The hoards of people detract from the mood I guess but apart from the barbed wire fences and guard towers, the place looked rather innocent.
The real shock is entering building after building that has different displays. The first few I saw had pictures of exterminations and camp living conditions. Many had captions explaining the graffic images but one picture caught my eye that had no caption and nor it needed one. Sometimes a solitary image says it all. There were also terrifying quotes from the worst of the Nazis like Hitler, Himmler and Göring.
The other thing that really shocked me was the belongings of the victims. You can read stat after stat about how many people were killed there but the numbers are so great that it's hard to imagine. Seeing the mountains of bags, clothes, shoes, hair brushes really put the immense size if the atrocities into perspective. The worst was the huge pile of human hair that was used to make, among other things, bags and matresses.
I caught the shuttle bus to the neighbouring camp, Birkenau. It is a very eerie camp, unlike Auschwitz, where it is in a large open field containing the buildings that prisoners were held for larbour and awaiting extermination. The camp is seperated through the middle by the train tracks that were used
for bringing jews and other "undesirables" from all across Europe to the last place they would ever see. At the end of those tracks were the gas chambers. The fleeing Nazis blew them up in an attempt to hide the atrocities from the advancing Soviets. I was horrified to learn that 70 - 75 percent of all people to arrive here went immediately to the gas chambers for execution. To put it anther way, if a train of 1000 people arrived, 700 to 750 of them we hearded directly to thier deaths. The other 250 or so who were seen as fit and strong enough were used for forced larbour untill they died of malnutrition or exhaustion.
All in all the camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau were the most sickening places I have been since the Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh. It never ceases to amaze me just what human beings are willing to do to other human beings and it reiterates just what pure evil Adolf Hitler was.
So I've had a great time here in Poland, in fact it has been the best place I've been. One thing I love is the constant sense of
history throughout the country. Whether it is the old royal history, WWII or the fall of communism, there is always somewhere that holds a historical significance. There is a few places I would still like to see in Poland so I might come back one day. I have booked my ticket to Berlin tomorrow so I'll be heading back to England overland.
Cheers for the comments and emails, Untill next time;
PEACE CAMO
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alex
non-member comment
amazing, just amazing. nothing like i thought it would be, deffinatly a place to go, i would love to see where my grandparents grew up, and you have given me just a glimpse i'm sure.