July 9, 2016

Today we went on the Jewish Heritage Tour of the Warsaw Ghetto. We rode in our retro taxis.

The warsaw ghetto placed the jewish population ( approximately 400,000 jews) within the closed walls and then added an additional 100.000 jews which were from outside of warsaw.  Brick walls with barb wire prevented the jews from leaving the ghetto. 

Look at the bullet holes in the wall from the polish Partisan Warsaw uprising  in April 1944. The year before, In April 1943 was the Jewish uprising. 

The only building to survive in the rubble was the Catholic church because this was where the Nazis stored the Jewish possessions.  

Facts about Warsaw: 100,000 jews perished of starvation and disease. Almost all others were transported to the death camp Tryblinka. We walked the path to the UmSchlagplatz, where the people were crowded into cattle cars to their death. 

 We saw Mila 18, which was the headquarters of the Jewish

 underground and is the bunker where the Jews who survived the Uprising chose to end their own lives instead of having the Nazis do it. "Life without freedom was nothing"

 

Emanuel Ringelblum was a historian who hid chronicles of life in the ghetto in three places. An apartment, Number 28 marks the spot where one of these sets of papers were found underground. 

This photo is a monument to attest to the brave Jews  who used the sewers to procure weapons, food and supplies. 

We went to the Polin Jewish Museum to experience the 1000 year history of the Polish Jews. 

Here is a monument of the Ghetto heros. The original monument is in Yad Veshem and this is a replica of it. The stone was purchased by Hitler to represent his expected victory , but in the end it was used to mark the victory of the Jews!