WARSAW & The Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute

We arrived Saturday evening and soon we were in the Old Town and quickly found Julia's Apartment. Vehicular access is limited and we only had a short walk dragging our suitcases over the square cobble streets. Then we found Julia and went straight up to our accommodation on the first floor. The entrance hallway, all secure behind a locked gate, and then wide bare wooden stairs took us to the door of where we will spend a week. I looked around seeing peeling paint and decaying plaster and for some reason I felt very comfortable with that. Warsaw thanks to the Third Reich was mostly destroyed and the block we are in was re-built in 1953 when under Soviet control. Then we saw our apartment and could immediately see that this had been revamped. Smart, modern and mostly IKEA and light, bright with an amazingly comfortable bed. We were at home, it seemed.

Sunday morning was bright, mostly cloudy with a light breeze and a temperature of around 4/5 degrees. Birdlife was limited but Hooded Crows called and flew. We saw one foraging on the grass and it appeared to dig up a cache of meat, maybe. A few gulls flew and there were a House Sparrows. Pigeons of course were easily seen.

We strolled past some magnificent buildings on our way to The Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute. It was very peaceful and calm inside with a massive entrance hall and stairways. We were told that the Germans had blown up the Synagogue that was next door and the building that we were in was damaged by that explosion and fire as a consequence.



I think that we were the only visitors and having climbed to the first floor we were met by a guide who explained that there was a film to be viewed. We sat and watched pre 1939 scenes of Warsaw and then the horrors of the atrocities inflicted on the Jewish community. The naked dead lying in the streets to be carried away on hand carts and handled like rubbish by the Jewish enforced undertakers. All of these scenes viewed as one would watch a film. The pitiful living dressed in rags and sometimes bare footed and all cold and hungry.

The Nazis had made a propaganda film showing the best of how some Jews were living with meals in restaurants and going to the theatre. The reverse was true, of course. Then the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto after the uprising had been obliterated together with all structures. It was death on an industrial scale with a more callous example being in the extermination camps as in Treblinka. I think that we will have to go there just to gaze on the space that it once occupied.

It is now Monday morning and I needed to let yesterday's images settle in my mind before I felt able to write about them. On reflection we enjoyed our stroll around (atrocities apart) among the squares, fantastic architecture, other sightseers and bars and restaurants.

For this morning I will re-trace my steps to go to The Genealogy Department and search for some of my past family.