Warsaw Ghetto ~ Fear and Terror in the Social Imagination

I lived in Warsaw Poland for more than ten years. When I arrived in the late 90s, I was surprised to see so much residue of WWII.  I first started my higher education program at Stazic Palace; I was surprised to still see bullet holes in the steps of my university and on the iron fences and walls throughout the city.

During my studies, I went to Sobibor Poland where one of the Nazi extermination camps was located. There I met Tovi Blatt a camp survivor. It was horrifying to listen to him speak about the Nazi atrocities standing together at the same train platform. Today, the once Nazi terror site in Sobibor is a beautiful woods and hardly imaginable as a death camp.

The city of Warsaw, the capital of Poland, flanks both banks of the Wisla River. A city of 1.3 million inhabitants, Warsaw was the capital of the resurrected Polish state in 1919. Before World War II, the city was a major center of Jewish life and culture in Poland. Warsaw's prewar Jewish population of more than 350,000 constituted about 30 percent of the city's total population. The Warsaw Jewish community was the largest in both Poland and Europe, and was the second largest in the world, second only to New York City.

Following the Nazi German invasion of Poland on 31 August 1939, the Nazi German “Blitzkrieg” swept through Poland, and reached the southern and western parts of the city on 8 and 9 September 1939. Within a few days (until 28 September) the Nazi Germans had surrounded the city from all sides, and launched deadly air attacks, and artillery shelling, which caused heavy damage to buildings, and significant loss of life. 

Less than a week later, Nazi German officials ordered the establishment of a Jewish council (Judenrat) under the leadership of a Jewish engineer named Adam Czerniaków. 

As chairman of the Jewish council, Czerniaków had to administer the soon-to-be established ghetto and to implement Nazi German orders. On November 23, 1939, Nazi German civilian occupation authorities required Warsaw's Jews to identify themselves by wearing white armbands with a blue Star of David. The Nazi German authorities closed Jewish schools, confiscated Jewish-owned property, and conscripted Jewish men into forced labor and dissolved prewar Jewish organizations.

WARSAW GHETTO

On October 12, 1940, the Nazi Germans decreed the establishment of a ghetto in Warsaw. The decree required all Jewish residents of Warsaw to move into a designated area, which Nazi German authorities sealed off from the rest of the city in November 1940. The ghetto was enclosed by a wall that was over 10 feet high, topped with barbed wire, and closely guarded to prevent movement between the ghetto and the rest of Warsaw. Not only were there Polish Jews, but many Jews from Germany and Denmark were sent to Warsaw and or to Nazi camps in Poland. The population of the ghetto, increased by Jews compelled to move in from nearby towns, was estimated to be over 400,000 Jews. 

Nazi German authorities forced ghetto residents to live in an area of 1.3 square miles, with an average of 7.2 persons per room. Food allotments rationed to the ghetto by the Nazi German civilian authorities were not sufficient to sustain life. In 1941 the average Jew in the ghetto subsisted on 1,125 calories a day. Czerniaków wrote in his diary entry for May 8, 1941: “Children starving to death.” Between 1940 and mid-1942, 83,000 Jews died of starvation and disease. 

 

In January 1943, SS and police units returned to Warsaw, this time with the intent of deporting thousands of the remaining approximately 70,000-80,000 Jews in the ghetto to forced-labor camps for Jews in Lublin District of the Government General. On April 19, 1943, a new SS and police force appeared outside the ghetto walls, intending to liquidate the ghetto and deport the remaining inhabitants to the forced labor camps in Lublin district. For months after the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, individual Jews continued to hide themselves in the ruins and, on occasion, attacked Nazi German police officials on patrol. Perhaps as many as 20,000 Warsaw Jews continued to live in hiding on the so-called Aryan side of Warsaw after the liquidation of the ghetto. 

On August 1, 1944, the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa; AK), a non-Communist underground resistance army with units stationed throughout Nazi German-occupied Poland, rose against the Nazi German occupation authorities in an effort to liberate Warsaw. The impetus for the uprising was the appearance of Soviet forces along the east bank of the Wisla River. The Soviets failed to intervene; the Nazi Germans eventually crushed the revolt and razed the center of the city to the ground in October 1944. Though they treated captured Home Army combatants as prisoners of war, the Nazi Germans sent thousands of captured Polish civilians to concentration camps in the Reich. 166,000 people lost their lives in the uprising, including perhaps as many as 17,000 Polish Jews who had either fought with the AK or had been discovered in hiding. 

When Soviet troops resumed their offensive on January 17, 1945, they liberated a devastated Warsaw. According to Polish data, only about 174,000 people were left in the city, less than six per cent of the prewar population. Approximately 11,500 of the survivors were Jews. 

*http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005069

America Should Go the way of Polish School Lunches!

In Poland, kids at school from pre-school through high school get hot lunches and its not pizza. They get a balanced meal and in two courses: soup, followed by meat with potatoes, rice, or pasta plus a side of fresh cooked vegetables including beets and or a simple leafy green salad.


These meals are made at the schools and made fresh everyday. And, if your child cannot eat any of those food items, you send what he/she can have. The school does not cater to a few. Sounds harsh. Its practical and affordable by all.

Why not in America? If a society does not appreciate a home cooked meal over fast food, then its parents won't and neither will their children. Most schools in America serve pizza, hamburgers and fries or on the 'healthy side' mashed potatoes from the box with green beans from can and throw in an apple (or a dab of  applesauce) to make it appear as if they are trying. The rationale for junk food at school is that this is what kids want and will eat.

So, sad this is what we have come to. Make chicken soup and see the delight in your child's eyes that you care. Have them take some to school and let others see how much you care. Maybe their moms as well as teachers and administrators will be encouraged and do the same. The next thing you know, hot lunches will be as good as lunches in Poland!

Plums in Poland

This time of year, plums abound. I love a fresh gooey plum cobbler or plum dumplings. In many a backyard garden, plum trees are fully of heavy ripe fruit. I just loved to go on a walkabout and pick plums from the paths where they fell and made themselves readily available to the passing public. Or, wait for a family member to pick from their tree and make dumplings which are best served with a heavy cream sauce on the side and sprinkle of sugar.

Surprised and Not Surprised When in Poland

Just back from Wisla!

I love Polish Mountains and though Wisla is not as high in terms of elevation as Tatry, they are beautiful, peaceful and truly Polish. I read fancy articles that talk about Poland's transformation and I can agree a lot has changed due to foreign investment and EU membership but somethings just don't change in Poland and in Polish hearts and minds especially in Polish Mountains. Its all about being Polish. I wish more countries in the world including this one would take note that cultural homogeneity is a good thing.

Of course, there is always the good, bad and ugly of that kind of homogeneity but so is there more within a diverse mixed up culture where people pass each other smiling as if they understand something exists between on a very deep level... and it does not. It could not and they know it. Yet, they keep smiling because they think it helps to curb that pain of difference and it does to a certain degree. They keep smiling because of the agreed upon social contract which means that each one has the right to pursue his/her own happiness. Which sadly has nothing to do with securing the happiness of someone else and this is what gets lost in their pursuit. When it is realized, there is nothing that can be done about it ...as in a diverse culture there is no means to truly secure one's own happiness among so many different views of happiness.

What is Polish happiness? Family first (Polish mothers) and foremost, followed by good bread, and good friends together celebrating being Polish. Being together, being in the same soup, being in the same place, enjoying the good bread, and some bad and some ugly.  By having the good, one is not afraid of the bad and the ugly because today we have good bread ~ today, "we are Polish and tomorrow we will be too".

What is good? - Bread! What is bad? - Driving way too fast for conditions and people selling mushrooms or blueberries on the road side and taking way too crowded slow trains! What is ugly? -  smelly crowded trains, trams and buses, nails popping up on the swimming deck, holes in the swimming deck, drunks pissing themselves in front of you, Poles always being right and getting their way if you let them dictate and they will, hoping for short lines everywhere you go....


...hoping that they will finally ban post office workers who slam down their stamp like a gavel and of course the dog shit and empty plastic water bottles just about everywhere. They don't and won't print this in the travel magazines...

But hey, I love Poland because its Polish and I am part Polish. In saying that, there is great comfort in such belonging.... like nowhere else in the world on this 'globe' the earth!

Poland ~ What Poles are Passionate About

Poles are passionate people about family and their identity. At least that is how I remember Poland. It has been awhile since I lived there. I visit from time to time, but visiting is not the same. You have to live that reality... being Polish. My first impression was that everyone was a clone, mostly dressing the same, having the same names, eating the same food, remembering events the same way. Americans don't do that... not really. We remember things differently and are proud of our individualism, our relativistic point of view.

We don't bond with each other the same way Poles do and I miss that. Here, I don't feel or think I can say that I know my neighbor. I don't know what they are doing, eating, thinking. Poles know and I hope still have that wonderful privilege ~ that Polish closeness, which forgives, which loves even the unloved, the hater and the beggar because they are Polish.

My grandmother was Polish. Her family came from Znin. They left Poland when it was not Poland. It was Prussia, divided by 3 occupants: Russia, Prussia and Austro-Hungarian empire. Yet, Poles never lost the sense of who they were and what they were about. Largely held together by language, faith and family.

Poland became Poland again after WWI and then it was lost again after WWII. Not too many people know that Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt caused that to happen. Poland survived being a communist country and you might even hear some people who were born and raised in that reality say they miss it. What they probably miss is the closer Polishness they had during those harsh times which allowed them to survive and retain their identity.

I hope that Poland can retain its identity in this ever growing global reality where people will be made the same by commercialism, politics and economics.

Polish Easter Tradition

Pisanki: An Ancient Art of Hope and Life

by Lorraine Grochowska-Kiefer

Although the ancient European art of "Pisanki" has become very closely associated with Easter, it first came about more than 2000 years ago when people realized the connection between the egg and spring. (Our chickens always lay many more eggs in spring, when the daylight hours are long, than in fall and winter). After the dark, cold, and death of winter, the egg symbolized rebirth or hope. Even then certain people used wax and natural dyes to decorate the eggs with meaningful symbols. There is also an old legend that says that every pisanki egg made will reinforce the chain that holds an old evil monster in the bowels of the earth.

The "chicken and rooster" were symbols of fertility and grain symbolized plenty or good harvest.
The much-loved sun that gave light and life was often shown on the egg and so was a green bough or bloom.

They used onion skins, buckwheat husks, campion, bark of the wild apple and the flower of the lilac for yellow. For red they used cochinel (a female scale insect), deer horn, sandlewood, or beets. Green came from sunflower seeds and berries of the wild alder. Sometimes hollyhock blooms were used for certain shades, as well as various other blooms, leaves and moss. Today, we buy our dyes for the most part, although one time we tried onion skins, beets and some berries. A thousand years later, when much of Eastern Europe had embraced Christianity, the eggs were still made and considered to be a Lenten project in Poland. They were often made with Easter symbols, as well as some of the natural ones. The sun became the symbol for rebirth.

A way of life I can understand

Not too many people think about living rural and rough which is true homesteading; not what we see on American television. Those people are just wanna be. I don't think that most could get along without a car, without heat and indoor plumbing. Most could get along without electricity but still they would rally behind the use of solar or wind and still think that they were roughing it. I consider myself and my son fortunate to have lived with people who had only a wood burning stove for heat, no indoor plumbing at all, no computer, no cell phone, and only one cow for making their own churned their own butter.

They lived with their animals, a kind of symbiotic relationship of giving and taking life. The made little or no impact on the earth and yet lived a full life. They had friends, family and celebrations when new ones were born and old ones died. They looked up at the stars and watched sunsets and sunrises. They washed in the nearby lake in warm weather and put on the Sunday best only when they went to church.

I ate without a doubt the best bread, butter, pierogi, cottage cheese, sour cream, eggs, sausages and soups ever when I was there, somewhere by Bug a place where we can still recognize that east meets west.