Fri Sept 12 - Warsaw

 Fri Sept 12 - Warsaw

In Warsaw

Morning - visited the Royal Warsaw castle

Too big for any of my photos, so here's the link to the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Castle,_Warsaw

The castle was completely destroyed in WWII, down to the foundations that were blasted by the Nazis towards their goal of erasing the Polish identity. So what we see today is a complete reconstruction. As with several historic structures we've seen, the original had changed over the centuries as needs changed. As the royals got richer they built on to the castle. So part of the reconstruction effort was deciding on to what stage of the historical castle to rebuild to. 

The castle is now an art museum with beautiful rooms and paintings and sculptures of historical Polish kings.

Throne room

Painted ceiling in one of the portrait galleries.

The 1791 Polish Constitution, first of its kind in Europe and second in the world, after the US Constitution in 1789. I'm told the two have a lot of similarities.



Afternoon - Visited the Warsaw Uprising Museum

This was very disturbing. No pictures.

Background - The Nazis and the Soviets invaded Poland in 1939. At that time Poland was ~30% Jewish (most of the extermination camps were in Poland because that's where most of the Jews were). The rest of the Polish population was brutally repressed. 

The Polish Home Army was an underground resistance movement that fought the Germans where they could. It was aligned with the Polish government-in-exile in London.

Warsaw Uprising - In late 1944, the Nazis were retreating as Soviet army was approaching from the east. Warsaw is on the west bank of the Vistula River. When the Soviet army got to the Vistula River, they contacted the Home Army and encouraged them to openly fight the Nazis from within while the Soviets would invade from over the river. In August 1944 the Home Army began openly fighting, but the Soviets betrayed them and did not invade. Instead they reasoned that the Home Army, aligned with the democratic Polish government in London, would be an impediment to establishing a communist government in Poland. Better the Home Army and Nazis kill each other in Warsaw while the Soviets waited across the river. Without interference from the Soviets, the Germans were able to put down the Uprising and did horrible things to the population in retribution. 

One example of the retribution was the Wola massacre, where the entire population of the Wola neighborhood was killed, about 40,000 people, including men, women, children, and the elderly. 

The Soviets crossed the Vistula in January 1945 and pushed the Germans out of Warsaw. Before 1939, Warsaw had a population of 1.3 million people. When the Soviets freed it from the Nazis, the population was estimated to be only 1000. Estimates are that about half the population was lost due to refugees fleeing the city, but the other half was killed. I havewn't even mentioned the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Don't think evil doesn't exist in this world.





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