Poland Day 11

One section of the Warsaw Ghetto Wall

Today was our last day in Poland! We had a tour of Warsaw in the morning and a meeting with Warsaw Hillel, then we were free for the rest of our afternoon. Our walking tour was very interesting. We saw the last remaining pieces of the ghetto wall, buildings that survived the war, and many monuments dedicated to the people who perished throughout the war. Our guide told us that the ghetto was actually divided into a smaller section and a larger section and they were separated by a single street. The two parts were eventually connected by a bridge that went over the street. This tour was a really great way to learn about the history of Warsaw and see a lot of the city in a relatively short amount of time. After our 3 hour tour, we met with a person from Warsaw Hillel and she talked to us a little bit about what they do. One way that their services differ from in the US is that they get a lot of cases of adults coming in having been told that their grandparents or great-grandparents were actually Jewish, rather than what they had been told their whole life. She said they come there to get help in figuring out their identity with this new part of their life they hadn't known about.

A milk carton used to hide artifacts

After our tour and meeting, I got lunch at a cute bistro then went over to the Jewish Historical Institute to see their exhibition What We've Been Unable to Should to the World. This exhibit showcased the Warsaw Ghetto Underground Archive, a collection of testimony, letters, journals, poems, drawings, etc. that described life inside of the ghetto walls. The scarcity of food, overcrowded conditions, dangerous acts, thoughts, observations, theories, or anything else that those who lived there felt was important was recorded and given to the group, Oneg Shabbat. This group of several dozen, founded by Emanuel Ringleblum, stored these pieces in metal containers and milk jugs and buried them in hopes that they would be found in good hands after the war. The exhibit displayed only a handful of the pieces found, and I am very thankful that I was able to read the important words of those who most likely didn't survive the war. Some of the letters urged us to remember what had happened to them, to learn and prevent it from ever happening again, and some wrote "remember me" or "remember ___" whether it was a child or family member or their own name. Those phrases were really sad to read and I felt myself tearing up as I read them.

Side view of the Palace

The museum closed early, so after an hour we walked to Old Town and walked around for a little bit. We walked around the Warsaw Fortress and continued walking until we found ourselves in New Town. At that point, it was starting to get late and we wanted to get back in order to pack for our early morning. We had to decide whether we wanted to walk back all the way to the bus stop at Old Town or to continue wandering until we found a bus stop. We decided to keep wandering and we came across bus stop eventually, but after it was almost 10 minutes late, we decided to move to the next one. We were in an area that we hadn't been to before and we had to figure out where we were in order to figure out where we had to go. We put our map reading skills to the test and figured out which road we were on, the general direction we had to go to in order to reach the tram, and eventually which tram we needed to be on based on the direction it was traveling. We were successful and were able to reach tram 35 heading south and get back to our general hotel area! We took an hour and a half or so to work on packing and journals and headed to dinner.

Old Town

Today was a really great last day in Warsaw. It started out raining in the morning, but it wasn't too hard during our tour, then after lunch and the museum, it was starting to get brighter. By the time we reached Old Town, the sun was almost out and there was no rain. I was able to explore our last city by means of getting lost, but it was really cool to look around and also being forced to use a map since we didn't have cell signal. This trip has been overall really great and I have learned so much.