Warsaw

(Sam) Warsaw  Day 1

Warsaw is a modern city with an incredibly sad tale. The city has been sacked, burnt, conquered and destroyed so many times it is incredible that it stands today. The most notable disaster was WWII. First of all, pretty much all of the city's Jews (one third of the population at the time) were killed in concentration camps, and secondly, the city had two uprisings; both of which were brutally crushed by the Nazis. The first was the Ghetto uprising, when the Jews living in the ghetto tried to break free from Nazi brutality in the ghetto. They were quickly brought down by the Nazis and immediately sent to the camps. The second was much bigger and deadlier. With German forces throughout Poland retreating in the face of the Red Army, the Polish resistance decided to make their move and liberate their city so as to establish Polish command before the Allies and Soviets came with backup. They managed to liberate huge parts of the city but unfortunately, the Allies were too busy in Normandy and the Soviets were simply camping on the other side of the river waiting for the Nazis to crush any Polish resistance before the came and took over the city. The Warsaw Rising lasted 63 days, and between 150,000 and 200,000 (yes, two hundred thousand) Poles were killed. When the Nazis regained control of the city, Hitler ordered the city to be razed to the ground and for every inhabitant to be killed. By the end of WWII about 800,000 Varsovians had died according to the Lonely Planet guide. (Compare that with U.S.A's total military casualties of about 400,000). In all of Poland over 6 million people, (about 20 percent of the population) was killed during WWII, again according to the LPG. We will go tomorrow to the Warsaw Rising Museum where we can learn more about it.

We started our day in Warsaw at the Tourist Information inside the Palace of Culture and Science, a massive, building given to the city as a gift from Stalin. The building is the tallest in Warsaw and manages to be tall, squat, ugly, beautiful, plain and detailed all at the same time. It's quite an incredible building. We took a tram to a museum, decided not to go in because it was too much money and looked boring anyways, and then had lunch at a milk bar. We walked down a nice street called Nowy Swiat to the Old Town. The Warsaw Old Town was almost completely destroyed during WWII and was painstakingly restored in the same old stlye in the 50's and 60's. It incredible to think that these building that look a centuries old are only a few decades old. We did a bit of grocery shopping before heading home on the metro.