Today we stood inside the Jewish cemetery of Warsaw, overgrown and ill kept, that includes a sunken mass unmarked grave where Jews were brought who perished in The Warsaw Ghetto. Mitch Polay of Yonkers said Kaddish. For me, the most significant moment came when we stood before a marker for Janusz Korczak, a man who accompanied the orphans in his charge from Warsaw to Treblinka, even though he could have saved himself.
We visited the only synagogue remaining in Warsaw, the Nosyk Synagogue, and had a group picture taken after we offered flowers at the Warsaw Ghetto Fighters Memorial.
Because the Warsaw Ghetto was leveled by the Germans during the Uprising, there is not a lot to see that remains from the war, but we saw bits and pieces of the ghetto wall and noted the locations of events that were significant in the armed Jewish resistance, including the small area (Umschalgplatz) where Jews were brought to be collected by the Nazis and their collaborators. The ghetto walls enclosed 350,000 people in an area of two-and-one-half square miles until there were not any people left.
That is where we were today.
Tonight we attend a private Chopin recital.
The hotel we are in is called the Bristol; below my window is the courtyard of the presidential palace.
Tomorrow we leave here for the site of the pre-war shtetl of Kazimierz Dolny, the Majdanek concentration camp, and Lublin.
My computer and internet problems have followed me to Poland. I have a short film about our visit to Wannsee to share, but the internet pipe here is narrow and so far has not been able to carry it to you.
I have a lot of footage in the can, but I spend my time getting things to work rather than creating.
I will stay on it, however.
I hope you are well, and again, thank you for joining me.
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