Warsaw

Our train journey to Warsaw is a five and a half hour ride. The land we have been travelling through since leaving Berlin is fairly flat, much of it farmland with stretches of forested areas. Though it is called an express train we have stopped (briefly) at several places already to take on more passengers. Our car is quite entirely full now. A few seats behind, a young North American girl is having a protracted argument with the conductor about the validity of her ticket. Still, it is restful to be on the train after the last few days of fairly incessant activity.

We have an arrangement to meet tomorrow morning at our hotel with a man who will take us on a half-day tour of the important sites of Jewish Warsaw. In fact most were obliterated during the war when the ghetto was destroyed. Since, other places have arisen to memorialize that past and to focus the activities of the greatly reduced, but growing, city Jewish population. As in most of the large cities in Europe, Jewish people have enjoyed a variable welcome. In the fifteenth century the tolerance of Warsaw’s government attracted Jews from other locales in relatively large numbers. However, as they began to prosper, jealous tradesmen mounted strong opposition to their presence and they were forced to leave the city centre and settle in other districts. Late in the 17^th century the ban on their living in the centre of Warsaw was lifted; the Warsaw Jewish Commune was founded and a cemetery established. After 1815 when Poland came under Russian rule, restrictions on Jewish life and settlement were once again imposed. Nonetheless Jewish social, artistic, intellectual, and professional life flourished in the second half of the 19^th century. The post WWI settlements made Poland once again an independent country, extending further the integration of Polish Jews, particularly urban Jews, in the life of the country. In the 1930s the Jewish people comprised 30% of the population of Warsaw.

With the outbreak of WWII that world entirely was changed. Jews were ordered to wear the Star of David prominently on their outer clothing and in October, 1940 an extensive ghetto was established, within which the Germans locked 350,000 Jewish people. Hunger, disease, and increasing repression by the Nazis meant an ever-rising death toll within the ghetto. Jews from other Polish areas and from outside Poland were brought continually into the already densely populated area. On July 22, 1941, the SS began a series of mass transportations of Jews from the ghetto to the death camp of Treblinka. By September, 1942 most had been transported though Jews from elsewhere continued to replace them. Some of the original residents remained as well, some of whom had managed to go into hiding. When the Germans began organizing further transportations in April, 1943 it was decided by an already organized resistance cell within the ghetto to stage an uprising. They knew that their cause was hopeless but preferred to die on their own terms. The Germans were held at bay for nearly three weeks. In the ensuing battles the ghetto was destroyed. The Great Synagogue, symbol of the Jewish community had been in use as a warehouse since the German victory. To signify the entire destruction of Jewish Warsaw the SS blew it up. A concentration camp was set up on the site of the former ghetto in August, 1943. About 5,000 Jews from Hungary, France, and Greece were brought from Auschwitz and housed there. They were used as slave labourers in the ghetto land, destroying the burned houses and sorting bricks and metals for further use. A year later some were liberated at the time of the Warsaw uprising. The ruined city was occupied by the Soviet army on January, 1945. Few Jews survived the war in Warsaw. Those who did so mainly owed their lives to Polish citizens who hid and fed them.

Under the Soviets Jews suffered other forms of discrimination. Since the fall of the USSR conditions have improved significantly here in Poland. Next year a major new Museum of the History of Polish Jews will open. It already is partially available for visitors with some temporary exhibits. We will be taking the English tour on Wednesday.

We have arrived in Warsaw. The train station is next to an enormous mall with ulta-modern architecture and very stylish shops. Across the broad avenues surrounding it are six- or seven-story 19th century buildings check-to-jowl, looking quite elegant. Across from them with great ostentation stands an enormous "wedding cake" building a la Seven Sisters' buildings of Moscow. It was built during the Soviet era to house a technical institute -- "a gift" from the technical workers of the USSR to their Polish comrades. Our hotel in Warsaw is fairly close to the city center and also to the train station – which has helped us find our way around without difficulty. Poland is in the European Union but is not on the Euro. As a result goods and services are considerably less expensive here than they were in Berlin -- a blessed relief.