It has been a couple of sobering days here in Warsaw.
For photo album of 2014 Poland, Click HERE
In 1943, the Jewish Resistance rose up against the German occupation of Poland. The Germans required the Polish Jews to wall themselves off with a two meter high brick wall In 1940. Jews from other parts were brought into the walled ghetto which served as a concentration camp until the Jews were shipped off to gas chambers, There were approximately 300,000-400,000 densly packed Jews in 3.3 square kilometers. Food was scarce and the people were hungry and dying from typhoid.
It is my understanding, that the uprising resulted in a self-induced suicide as the resistance had little to fight with but figured they had nothing to lose and they could at least die with dignity (250-300,000) met their deaths, here. Today in Warsaw, there are few remnants and artifacts of the Jewish ghettoes. We could hve wondered through the streets not even knowing that we were once in the walled off sector.
Fortunately, we had made contact with a SERVAS day host, Ewa, retired economist and public servant. She guided us through the ghettos, showing us places where monuments, markers, and new buildings now stood where the ghettos used to exist. Ewa, is not Jewish, but had considerable historical knowledge. She also shared her own family's personal Polish tragedy during the German Nazi regime, where her father was a POW at the end of the war and escaped to ultimately be reunited with his wife, His wife Ewa's mother as a young wife was basically thrown by the Nazis into the streets with a three month old baby when here husband was taken as a POW.
She wandered looking for food and shelter to no avail. The baby, died. Eva's mother relates stories of how the civilian Poles were massacred and buildings set on fire by the Nazis. Women and children jumped from the burning buildings to their deaths. Apartment buildings on contoured hills in the old ghetto area have been built on the ashes 0f the original buildings. It is too poignant reminder of the death and destruction that war brings. All very tragic.
After our walking tour of Warsaw, we took the metro back to our home stay SERVAS hostsHanna and Jacek. We stopped at a nearby store and picked up enough ice cream to share with them and their extended family. We sat in the backyard on a warm summer evening enjoying our last evening together. Tomorrow we leave for Krakow.
All is well with the Worrall Travel R's
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