Warsaw on Foot

Today was our first time on the Warsaw Metro. We took the subway a couple stops north into the Old Town and sat in the shade. It was hot and humid. Jordyn presented her research on the Warsaw Ghetto and told us about her family's history in Poland.

very impressive
calm and spiritual despite the heat

It was a religious and national holiday in Poland called Corpus Christi day. It focuses on the Eucharist, which is the wafer transubstantiated into the body of Christ.  It also emphasizes the Last Supper, when Christ taught about the Eucharist ritual. The day is celebrated by a mass in the church and then a special procession that leads from the church to four different sites in the city, and the wafer is displayed in a case as part of the procession. It is a happy day celebrating the eternal presence of God in peoples' daily life. The Cathedral where it started was full, so we went on by and found some shade in a viewing spot where we could look at all the nuns and priests lined up, waiting to join the procession.  When it started, music was amplified into the street and the different groups (marked by different colored robes, or different uniforms, or amazing outfits) walked in an orderly manner, while the crowds watched.  Little girls in white dresses strewing rose petals on the street were among them, and once the procession had passed and the crowds followed, the pink, red, and white petals remained on the path.

the front of the
synagogue

After a break for lunch, we walked to the Nozyk Synagogue.  It was built at the end of the 19th century by a wealthy Warsaw Jew, and it was one of the many Warsaw synagogues before the war.  But it is the one one that survived the destruction of World War II. The Nazis destroyed all the rest, but they permitted this one to remain because they were using it to stable their horses!  After the war, the synagogue was restored.  Today it has been revitalized and is the central Jewish synagogue for Warsaw Jews to come and pray.  It is an Orthodox synagogue, though, so it is not to everyone's taste because there is separate seating for men and women, and only men lead the prayers and chant from the Torah.




We took the tram and walked what seemed like several miles to Lazienski Park to meet the students of Warsaw University of Social Sciences and Humanities.  Prof. Lucyna Alexandrowicz-Peditch, a friend of Prof. Myers, had recruited some of her students in the university's English language studies program to meet with us and show us what to do on a day when everything is closed.

Gus was one of the students who went with the Polish students to the bank of the Vistula River. He wrote that meeting the students was really fun and interesting. They were all about the same age range as of our group. They were really happy to meet us and hear how excited we were about being in Poland and exploring the history and culture of their country. The river bank is a good hang out place for college stundents to relax, enjoy the cooler air, and buy food.

Katie O'Connell wrote this about the experience:  We had an opportunity of a lifetime! After getting to know each other by taking a long walk from the Park to the River Bank, we all decided to go out to dinner to explore the night life in Warsaw. The amazing Polish students took us to a place called Halakoszyki. This place looked like a train station converted into a fun, vibrant and colorful food court. The food was tasty; there was a variety of selections from traditional polish food to seafood to Mexican cuisine. Poland’s take on Mexican food was humorous to us Californians. We took a dare to try it and to our surprise, it was delicious yet confusing! Our fellow student Dat ordered two tacos. When his meal came he was as surprised as all of us. His tacos were actually burritos! We asked the Polish students if we ordered wrong and they all laughed and said “no, this is their version of a taco!” We thought this was so funny, and our time together was a blast! We shared laughs, educational experiences, intimate moments, wonders about our countries and further future endeavors. We all exchanged phone numbers in hopes to get together soon in America.

Here's another tale of night life in Warsaw by Jessica:

On Wednesday night, Art, Serena, Jordan, Corrine, Gus, and I decided to explore the nightlife in Warsaw. We had no idea where to go or where to start so, we decided to ask a couple of Polish residents where we could find the best dance clubs in Warsaw. Everyone told us the dance club district of Warsaw was located in the street of Mazowiecka.

It was only a fifteen or twenty minute walk from the hotel, and when we got there, we were overwhelmed by the amount of clubs that were on that street alone. We were approached by promoters left and right handing out flyers to their club. For the most part every club was free for ladies, and fifteen Złoty for guys.

We decided to go to two clubs. The first club, Rozrywki, was mainly populated by Polish people and was similar to a generic club I could find in LA. However, the second club, Ritual Cocktail Club only played Spanish music. Everyone seemed to be having a great time, and it was packed with people in every corner of the room. The people were very diverse, from Asian, British,  and Russian backgrounds. In addition, I also noticed that there were people of every possible age range, from old to young and everything in between. Seeing older people was odd to me because back home, I m used to only seeing younger people going to the club.

{Contributors: Lesley, Jessica, Jordyn, Gus, and Katie}

Polin highlights

The Polin Museum of the History of the Polish Jews, which opened at the end of 2014, covers 1000 years of history, and it is also an educational center (it holds conferences, public lectures, and programs for different sectors of the population) for Poles to learn about the Jews who used to be so plentiful in the land.  The core exhibition is divided into seven galleries, each representing a historical period.

These two summaries describe elements from the “Encounters with Modernity (1772 –1914)” gallery.

Poland lost its independence
for 123 years

Dat: The modern era in Poland begins when the Polish state “disappears” at the end of the eighteenth century.  Poland was partitioned between Prussia, Russia, and the Austrian Empire, and by 1795 the Polish state was no longer on the map.  This was depicted in the first room in that gallery with an empty, royal throne – this is Poland.  Facing the throne, hung from the ceiling, were three separate royal portraits: Francis I (Emperor of Austria), Catherine the Great (Empress of Russia), and Frederick Wilhelm (King of Prussia).


Poland was restored to political independence in 1918.

paintings by an interwar Polish
Jewish artist from Yung Yiddish

Rebecca: The gallery "On the Jewish Street (1918 –1939" included information about Jewish avant-garde artists of the interwar era.  The term avant garde refers to elite artists who are not trying to appeal to a wide public, but to other artists and intellectuals – they tend to experiment and in this era drift away from realism.  During the interwar era in Poland it was a good time to be such an artist, but that ended with the rise of Nazism.  The Nazi regime began to regulate artists in terms of subject, style – for example, Hitler had a background in painting, and he opposed non-representational art and favored realism.  In 1937 he ordered Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Ziegler to organize two traveling exhibits: Degenerate Art (the pieces he thought were bad and socially destructive) and Pure German Art.

Yiddish paper featuring
religious news

Yiddish newspapers

Sydney: Also in the gallery "On the Jewish Street (1918 –1939)" was a display of the many newspapers written for and read by Jewish people.  Some of these were in the Polish language, and some were in Yiddish.  You can tell by the photos of the front pages of the newspaper that some newspapers focused on arts and culture, some were religious, some were political.  If Jews were reading these newspapers, they were educated.  This section also showed that some Jews had gained prominence in independent Poland. 

Art: The Holocaust gallery included photos and charts of the events leading up to the “Final Solution,” which was the murder of the Jews.  The museum focused on the Polish lands conquered by Germany, where one of the first things done was to make Jews move to restricted parts of a town.  These were called ghettos.  One wall chart listed the names of the 600+ ghettos scattered throughout Poland.  Later, the Jews in the smaller ghettos were forced to move to the larger ghettos, and from there they were sent to death camps.  In all, 6 million Jews were murdered, after years of terrible treatment and torture.



The last gallery in the museum was "Post-War Years (1944-present).  The Polin Museum itself is part of that story, and so is the huge phenomenon of cultural tourism in Poland.  In our visit to Poland, we exemplified both of these!

Our very long, full, first day in Warsaw

We started with the amazing hotel breakfast buffet, and we could go back again and again to fill up our plates. There are a variety of coffees, cappuccino, latte, tea, and fruit juices of all types.  Fresh breads, rolls, croissants, and breakfast pastries.  Sausages, goulash, pierogis, scrambled eggs, cheeses, fish, and cereal. Lard, anyone? You can spread it, like peanut butter, onto bread. 

We started our city tour at 9. a.m. in an air conditioned “motor coach” outfitted with a microphone so our tour guide could lecture as we drove around the city.  At first we drove up and down the wide, major boulevard built by the post-World War II communist regime for patriotic displays. Our tour guide remembers marching for hours when she was a school girl, during the obligatory and tedious May Day marches. We saw beautiful mansions in the embassy neighborhood, and current government buildings. 

look through and see
a reconstruction of
the ghetto walls

In a different part of the city we got off the bus to see the minimal remainders of the walls that surrounded the Jewish ghetto set up by the Nazis from 1940-1943, into which Jews from all over the city and different parts of Poland were sent to live in very crowded conditions. They were given about 250 calories per day of food, and many starved or died of disease.  Finally, several thousand per day were deported– sent away—on trains to Treblinka, a death camp.  The day before the last deportation was going to occur, on April 19, a group of young Jews revolted against the Germans. The fighting continued for two weeks while the Germans destroyed it block by block and killed everyone they found on the spot or sent them to the Treblinka death camp. The ghetto was so destroyed that the walls do not remain, but there are street markers indicating its location.

images of the ancient Judeans
in exile on the banks of the
rivers of Babylon

We then visited the Brodka cemetery.  It is a huge plot of land  with many many tombstonesm and each contains specific symbols of special nature along with names, dates, and other information that pertains to the individual.   

At the right is a glimpse down one of many, many lanes forming the quadrants of which one can navigate the cemetery. It gives the solemn, ethereal nature of this site in Warsaw.  It is, suffice to say, a lovely place. Although this and many sites are of a great, deep pain in Jewish memory, the cemetery is a peaceful haven for birds and other animals. It's quite a sight to walk around and witness the dedication that people have to the dead until this very day, as it is still in operation.

The photo on the left is a memorial dedicated to the child victims of WWII. The stones seen placed on the memorial and around it are an old Jewish custom; this is also seen elsewhere on many, if not all graves in the cemetery.

Another touching monument in the cemetery is dedicated to orphanage director and pedagogical expert, Janusz Korczak. Born in Warsaw, Korczak devoted his life to helping children and developed a teaching methodology similar to Montessori that allowed students to take control of their learning environment. He was well respected throughout the world, even among Germans. When the Jews were forced into the confinement of the ghettos and then transferred to Treblinka, Korczak turned down multiple offers for sanctuary to stay with the children in his orphanage to the very end.

Afterwards, we had a guided tour at the new Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews. It is a very rich and beautifuly presentation of one thousand years of history. Its seven separate galleries each describe a different chapter in Polish Jewish life. This blog will contain some student reports about it, but they are not yet ready. 

mall that looks like it's melting

After eating lunch, we were driven to and then walked into the Old Town. Warsaw is going through a humid heat wave that turns us Angelenos into limp rags.  Our official tour was over and we began to sample the treats: ice cream, slushies, souvenir shops, sitting under umbrella-covered tables to sip lemonade. But some of the group was so utterly exhausted by then that they returned to the hotel, showered, snacked, and napped. 

A second wind brought some us back outside, as far as the Old Town, to enjoy the night life. The streets and squares were filled with younger Poles enjoying themselves.  It was a hang-out-laid-back atmosphere, and such a relief to feel the cooler night air.

{contributors: Lesley, Robyn, and Samantha B.}  

 

Our journey and the first night

Sam T's view out the window on
the ten-hour flight to Amsterdam

We all managed to find each other at LAX, and even though our flight left an hour late, it seemed like we spent all afternoon in lines at security, walking down long halls, and grabbing food for our 10 hour flight to Amsterdam. It is not easy to sleep sitting upright!  When we landed in Amsterdam, we again walked through the airport to passport control and then to our next gate.  By then we were so tired that most of us slept during the 2 hour flight to Warsaw.  

Matadors in Warsaw Chopin Airport

Sam T. and Lesley’s baggage did not arrive!! Can you imagine how worried and irritated they were!  We filed a claim with the airline, remained optimistic, used the buddy system to supply clothes (Sam bought a t-shirt), and the suitcases were at the hotel in the morning.  

That night at the hotel we had a group dinner, and the entire twenty-five of us were together for the first time.

the Palace of Culture and Science,
a "gift" from Stalin to Warsaw

The night life here is very interesting!  The sun sets after 8:30 p.m., so despite our exhaustion, most of the group walked around after dinner. Our hotel is across the street from a mall, and lots of college-age students were walking around with each other – why aren’t they home studying?  In order to cross the busy streets (our hotel is at a major intersection), you have to go underground where there is a whole system of streets and shops. 

a blatant example of
Americanization, right across
the street from our hotel

Most were closed, but we got the sense that this was a vibrant commercial center of the city.  There’s nothing like it in L.A. – for those who are familiar with NYC, it’s like the underground in Grand Central Station.   

Let’s talk about sleeping – or the lack thereof.  We are 9 hours later than L.A., and add to that our lack of sleep on the plane.  You would think we would collapse into bed and sleep soundly.  Some managed that.  But many report awakening at 3 a.m., and some never managed to fall asleep until then!  The hotel has no airconditioning, so our windows were open and we could hear the city thrumming: the metro, the racing motorcycles, cars, and there was an alcohol-fueled, joyous man shouting and belting out songs at 2 a.m.  By 4 a.m. the sky was getting light, and the sun was out and shining brightly by 4:30 in the morning. 

No matter how well or how long we slept, we all are looking forward to our first day in Warsaw.

{contributors: Sam T. and Joseph}

We've arrived, safe and sound!

Not to worry, we are all here, and by tomorrow morning the two missing pieces of luggage will arrive also!

Tomorrow we will put up a real post, but meanwhile here is a photo of us bright and energetic at the Los Angeles International Airport, at our gate.