Thanks for looking!
In the spring of 1943, when the Germans started clearing out the
Warsaw ghetto (i.e. transporting its inhabitants to Treblinka), a band
of about 300 fighters armed with whatever they could get from the
Polish underground, decided to make a last stand. They knew they would
die but at least it would be a fighting death, and they would take
some Germans with them. The uprising lasted about 3 weeks. It ended
with the leaders holed up in a bunker, surrounded by the Germans. They
fought to the end, and finally the last group committed suicide rather
than be captured.
After that, the Germans cleared the ghetto and razed almost all
buildings to the ground. After the end of the war in 1945 most of
Warsaw was in ruins. Naturally the focus of the rebuilding effort was
on housing for the people and later the historical old city, a process
which lasted for decades (the rebuilding of the Royal Castle was
completed in 1984). Where the ghetto once was there are just normal
apartment blocks today. In recent years (post-1989) the whole issue
of Jewish history and heritage in Poland has become much more
prominent, so that today there are monuments and markers all over the
area, including the spot where the leaders of the uprising died. There
is even an entire street that has been preserved as it was before the
war. "Preserved" is generous; what really happened is that the street
was neglected, to the point that many of the buildings are now in
danger of collapsing. They are now being renovated inside (I will show
some when I post my Warsaw gallery) but on the outside they are meant
to stay the same.
In one place, a fragment of the outer ghetto wall survived, mainly
because one of the residents in an adjacent apartment building thought
it was important to preserve history and so prevented looters from
stealing the bricks to use for other construction or vandalizing it.
Today it is officially signposted and is an important stop on the
"ghetto trail" in Warsaw.
Cheers,
Nathan
Nathan Wajsman
Alicante, Spain
http://www.frozenlight.eu
http://www.greatpix.eu
http://www.nathanfoto.com
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On Jun 29, 2009, at 9:17 PM, Ken Norton wrote:
> Nathan, could you give us more background on the Ghetto wall? There
> is a
> history lesson which I'm interested in.
>
> AG
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