Where have you been?

My mother and nephew were both impressed by the historic value intrinsic in everything. On almost every corner there was something dating back to at least the second World War if not much, much farther. In this picture, for example, we can see the Fighting Poland symbol painted on the building.


These markers litter the city and indicate where groups of people, sometimes very large groups of people, were executed by Germans or Russians during WWII. This one commemorates the murder of 30 people on September 2nd, 1944. They were killed by Germans.


This marker, by contrast, signifies something a bit more pleasant. This says that the street, Krzywe Koło, was established in 1443 - fifty years before America was even "discovered"!

One of the things my mother loved the most was the particular architecture of Poland (and therefore Europe in general). Huge buildings, large facades, columns, everything. It is so different from what you find in Los Angeles it is interesting just to experience.


One of her favorites was the accents that were added to buildings. Whether it is a wrought iron lamps, carvings or gargoyles, it's different and more interesting from a cold steel/glass building.


The pictures above are all from Warsaw's old town. The top is of the street along Plac Zamkowy, the middle is on the river side of the castle, and the bottom photo is simply one of the many narrow lanes in the old town area. Could you imagine and American SUV driving alone such a street?

After a brief but hard rain the skies cleared up and we were able to enjoy the rest of our walk through the city center. Here you can see our guests and my wife standing in front of one of the old fortifications of the city wall. We had to explain several times why a city would need thick, thick wall for protection. In our modern, American, society it is difficult to imagine a time when Knights, true horse-mounted Calvary, and Bowmen were a nation's fighting force.


It is difficult to tell from this picture but we are just outside the Zamek Królewski (King's Castle). The castle is not original however, because the original structure was basically destroyed along with most of the rest of old town Warsaw during WWII.

In looking for information about the Warsaw King's Castle I came across this listing of castles and palaces in Poland: www.Castles.Info. It's an interesting read although the English is not great.

We spent the first full day of their vacation looking around the old town area of Warsaw. Dating from around the thirteenth century, old town Warsaw is like nothing you will ever see in America. In fact, it is even a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


The weather was a bit shitty though. Cold and rainy. But not enough to prevent us from having some ice creams and playing with the well!


Can you pick out the foreigner?


From my other posts you know Poland is full of history and monuments celebrating that history. This little guy is the "Small Insurgent Monument" commemorating the children killed during the Uprising. The monument itself depicts Antek Rozpylacz - a boy-soldier killed nearby.


Our tour guide.

Towards the end of summer (but before our wedding) my mom and nephew visited us in Poland. It was the first time either of them had been to Europe so I took them on a whirlwind trip around Poland. In all I think we drove close to two thousand kilometers (about 1200 miles) which works out to about three and a half full days in the car.


At my sister's request I took many, many photos and I will be sharing some of the best of them with you over the next several weeks (and probably months - we are in no hurry here!).


This first batch represents the first hours they spent in Poland. At the top we see them just off the plane waiting for me to bring the car around to pick them up. The middle picture shows them relaxing with my wife at our flat. And the bottom picture shows my mom getting to know Kobra.

We ended our walking tour at Metro Ratusz sitting near this fountain. The walk was very interesting and connected history from the far west to the far east all in one afternoon. Unfortunately the museum and cemetery were closed but we should have a chance to see them again some day.

Pawiak was a 19th century prision that eventually became the home of the German Gestapo during WWII. It is believed that just over 100000 people passed through Pawiak during the war but like other things in Poland the records have been lost. The dead tree has become a symbol of the many many lives lost during WWII not only at Pawiak but across Poland as well.


Most of the building was destroyed but what remains is now a museum. Unfortunately it too is closed on Sundays so we were unable to see the inside. I have heard it documents some of the torture that went on inside the prision and that it is both very graphic and very moving. Here we can see an original portion of the gate complete with barbed wire.


This picture shows two of the main symbols of Poland. The first is naturally the Polish national flag - White and Red. The other is the PW of the Polish resistance movement during WWII. PW is short for Polski Walczącej or "Fighting Poland".


To see such powerful symbols of freedom during the height of Gestapo action during WWII would have been unheard of, especially just outside the gates. But today it is a reminder of how right can overcome evil.

This monument to Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw is in memory and dedication to the Jews that first took up arms against the Nazis during the uprising in 1943. The west side of the monument (shown above) shows the struggle against the Nazis. The people are carrying bombs, guns, etc...


The east side (shown above) depicts the martyrdom of the women, children and elderly. This monument was commissioned by the Central Committee of Jews in Poland which had its offices in Los Angeles at the time.

On our walk we tried to visit the Jewish Cemetery but it is closed on Sundays. I hear it's nice though...

Although the Jews were by far the worst persecuted group during WWII the Poles were probably the second. At the beginning of the war the Polish were just as likely to be killed/beaten/harassed as the Jews. After the Nazi Final Solution was decided upon there is little comparison in sheer numbers of peopled killed but the Polish suffering lasted for another fifty years under the yoke of Soviet socialism.


This monument at Plac Muranowska in the form of a railcar with several crosses on it is in remembrance of those who were deported or murdered by their Soviet "liberators". Despite what western history books teach kids it was the Soviets who stopped the Nazi war machine in WWII and it was, therefore, the Soviets that dictated who exactly got the spoils of war.


Poland was freed in the early 1990s and this monument was erected shortly after in 1995. Poland continues to suffer from its fifty years of Soviet oppression though, not only from the lost generations but also from the fear of the unknown. Unlike the Czech Republic and Slovakia whose secret communists documents were made public years ago, Poland's secret documents were mostly destroyed at the end of communism and today many politicians accuse their rivals of being Soviet collaborators. There have been countless commissions, public arrests, and books about the subject but never any progress. Recently the IPN has produced a damning report that Nobel Laureate Lech Wałęnsa was really a Soviet spy and was only able to survive because of his Kremlin connections.

Umschlagplatz was a Nazi staging area for the transportation of Jews to extermination camps.


The site itself is not so impressive but as you sit in the square and see the surrounding neighborhood the grotesqueness of what happened there come through very clearly. In the middle of a peaceful city its citizens were gathered up and shipped off for extermination. Simple. Just like that.

I just found the Wikipedia has a nice summary of Jews in Poland if any of you are interested in reading more.

Okay, I am back in business here and not only am I over my election hangover but I also have a new computer. Now editing and posting pictures will be lightning fast! Anyway, we are going to continue our tour of Warsaw with a look at some my photos from a self-guided Jewish walking tour my wife and I went on during the summer.


Warsaw, as I said, if full of history and was actually one of the main Jewish cities outside of Jerusalem prior to World War II. There are many important WWII sites around the Jewish Ghetto and you can find many self-guided walking tours on-line.


The tour I found started in Ogród Krasińskich which is not actually a Jewish site but simply a public park that runs along the boarder of the Jewish Ghetto. It's a 17th century park that now hosts the National Lilbrary and Supreme Court bildings, the National Archaeological Museum, the Monument of Heroes of Monte Cassino, and the Remembrance of Soldiers of the Chrobry Simonsa battalion memorial (shown here).

Okay, I have been a bit more bogged down with elections, registration cards, and visa applications than I expected so I will take an official "time out" from blogging for a week to catch up on life.

I will leave you with a *new* idea I have come to embrace while living in Europe: Relegation. The idea is that the shitty professional teams are moved down into lower leagues where they can "improve" while the better lower league teams are bumped up into the big leagues. There are many arguments supporting this system but I think it's fair to say the organizers (owners) of American sports don't want to see their monopoly vanish. Everyone knows the Los Angeles Lakers but no one gives a shit about the Los Angeles Clippers for example (because they suck and their owner uses them as an investment.)

But don't take my word for it, check out the following link which has an awesome video of an English football fan watching his team beat Man U to avoid relegation.

Go West Ham!