We Persevered in Warsaw
Umschlagplatz in Warsaw
I was ready to give up when we found the “re-loading point” or the Umschlagplatz. During the Nazi occupation, these were all over Poland. Read my post on Krakow. Jews were brought here to be sent to the death camps. In all, approximately 320,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto went through here. On this day someone else quickly visited the site.
This gentleman is dressed in Hassidic (Jewish orthodox) clothing. The colors of the monument are in keeping with Jewish ritual clothing; white with a black stripe on the front wall. The broken forest motif on the headstone of the memorial symbolizes the extermination of the Jewish nation. This monument represents the freight cars that took the people away.
We Found It
With the help of another friendly Varsovian, we found what we were looking for. During the Uprising, some of the heaviest fighting occurred here. And it was here that the first clash between the ghetto fighters and the German soldiers took place.
The inscription reads: “From the Jewish People – To their Fighters and Martyrs”.
There is an excellent article about this monument here. It is an examination of the monument and the sculptor, Nathan Rapoport. The author of this article mentions that you may miss the back of this monument which I did. I didn’t know that there was a bas relief on the other side! It’s a shame. To add insult to injury, the Museum of Polish Jewry was closed. It was Tuesday. Closed on Tuesdays. That’s what you get for tearing around Warsaw and not doing your homework.
The inscription reads: “To those fallen in the unparalleled heroic fight for the dignity and freedom of the Jewish people, for a free Poland, for the liberation of man. Polish Jews“.
Jan Karski Polish Resistance Fighter
This statue, and others like it, can be found in New York City, Krakow, Georgetown, and Tel Aviv. Jan Karski (Karski was an alias, his real name was Kozielewski) worked as a courier traveling from Warsaw to the Polish Government-in-exile. He had a rare gift. He had a photographic memory. This made him indispensable to the Resistance. His mission was to save Poland. And yet he is also well-known for traveling to London and Washington and telling the powerful what he saw in the Warsaw Ghetto, and what he saw at a temporary holding camp where some Jews were shot on the spot and others sent to larger death camps.
Karski’s message was that Jews were being systematically murdered in large numbers. To his great frustration and sorrow, President Roosevelt was not interested and Justice Felix Frankfurter, the highest-ranking Jew in Washington at that time, simply did not believe him.
A Jewish Ghetto Uprising Museum is coming in 2023.
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