27.07.2011 – 27.07.2011  19 °C

Nice leisurely start this morning as I had no real plans but to view more of the Old Town and to see some more of the sites of the Jewish Ghetto.

My travels took me back through the heart of the Old Town to the only remaining piece of the Old Town Wall. I feel a bit sorry for the local Warsaw folk.. it wasn’t until just before the first world war that they “rediscovered” the Old Town Wall during archaeological diggings. Once discovered, the town decided to uncover more of the Old Wall and to begin the slow process of renovating and rebuilding the wall. It wasn’t until the mid-20s that the Wall was officially “re-unveiled” to the world as the Old Warsaw Town Wall. Less than 15 years later the wall was turned into complete rubble by the Nazi’s during their bombing blitz, and the painstaking task of rebuilding the wall did not commence until the mid-50s.

You can now walk through a part of the wall to see some of the history of the wall itself; from medieval time’s right thru to modern day when it was re-opened to the public. Back during medieval times the wall (and the 20 or so watch towers surrounding Warsaw) were manned by members of the guilds. Each guild had a certain part of the wall that they were responsible for guarding. There was no city guard as such each guild had their own bit of wall that they were required to defend! There are also many photos showing exactly how decimated the Old Town was during the war.. In one photo the only building left standing amongst what you would assume is at least four city blocks is a catholic church (and it looked like it had suffered some pretty heavy damage).

From the Old Town Wall I wandered throughout the “New Town” which appears to be just as old as the Old Town! Basically, back in the 1500s the King decided to start expanding Warsaw and so the New Town was born. The New Town was not surrounded by as good fortifications as the Old Town and mainly peasants and poor business people lived in the New Town. The New Town is filled with Catholic Churches and two different working cloisters! (Actually all of Warsaw is filled with churches, but the New Town has a church on nearly every intersection.) Nun’s in habit isn’t something you would see regularly when walking about in Brissie but here in Warsaw it isn’t uncommon and now I understand why. Within a space of 400m there are two different nunneries.

It’s a sad story but many of the churches in the Old and New Towns were used by the Warsaw Resistance during the war as places of refuge or make-shift hospitals. During the uprising (1943) the Nazi’s discovered that churches were being used as places of refuge and so started systematically targeting the churches in both towns. Thousands of people were killed when most of the churches were bombed and destroyed. Most of the bodies were never recovered and the total number of dead (or the names) is unknown.

After spending a few hours wandering about drinking in the sites of the two towns I ventured out to see the remaining Jewish sites. At the moment there is no Jewish Ghetto museum (it is under construction and is expected to be finished in Late 2012) there is only a few monuments to the horror that occurred here during the war. There is a monument to the Ghetto Uprising. During Mid 1942 almost 300,000 people were deported to Treblinka. Originally, the Nazi’s told the Jewish community that the people were being transported “East” to “Labour Camps”. By early 1943 the remaining Jewish population had discovered the truth of what the “Eastern Labour Camps” were and so many of the remaining inhabitants of the ghetto rose up and started to attack the Nazi soldiers to try and prevent the remaining Jewish citizens from being sent to their deaths. The revolt lasted less than 5 months before the Jewish resistance collapsed. The remaining leaders of the resistance decided to commit suicide rather than be captured by the Nazis. The location where they committed suicide has since become a monument to the Jewish resistance. On the avenue leading to the monument is a number of basalt rocks. On these rocks is inscribed the names of some of the members of the resistance as a commemoration of the sacrifice they made to try and protect the remaining few Jews. Only 1500 of the Warsaw Jews survived the war.

My last stop was another monument. This monument depicts the gate through which the Jewish people would have passed on the way to the “Eastern Labour Camps”. They were herded onto trucks (after leaving this gate) before ending their journey in a railway car at Treblinka.

As you can imagine my day ended fairly heavily. Although there isn’t much remaining of the Ghetto it is incredible to think that so many people lived in this area at one time and within the space of one year they were largely all wiped out. Tomorrow I’m off to Krakow with the express reason of seeing Auschwitz. I’m sure it is going to be a tough couple of days.