Rose Brooks

Episode 873 – Warsaw: There Were Monsters

I am always shocked by the seemingly endless capacity humans have for both love and hate, and for both creation and destruction.

Here in Warsaw, where the land, architecture, and people are all truly beautiful, it would be hard to imagine the literal ashes and rubble from which it was resurrected were it not for the fact that the city’s history is on full display.

This small monument on the perimeter of Saxon Garden, which is such a breathtakingly beautiful park, has a patch of empty earth in front of it. The monument’s inscription explains that this rectangle of land is “saturated with the blood of Poles who died for the freedom of humanity”. In the years between 1939 and 1944 mass executions were carried out here.

We have walked across several strips of pavement marked with the borders of Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto. On our way back from the train station today we also passed by the Nożyk Synagogue, which is the only surviving prewar synagogue in the city.

Quite near it is a sign showing the Warsaw ghetto’s area, where 450,000 people were isolated inside just 759 acres. For perspective, that’s a space about 9/10 of the size of New York’s Central Park, which is 843 acres.

We were reminded that the city of Warsaw itself was not irreparably damaged because of battles fought here; it was systematically destroyed by the Nazis in retaliation for the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.

85% of the city was intentionally razed.

Think about that.

Intentionally.

Looking at this beautiful reconstructed city, it is heartbreaking to imagine the kind of pure evil required to want to destroy it.

The Treasury Palace, now Warsaw City Hall, built in 1823, turned to rubble in 1944/45, and rebuilt between 1950 and 1954.

The destruction of the physical city was not the biggest evil perpetrated here though. Walking the perimeter of the Warsaw Ghetto is chilling.

Students of history are all aware of the huge atrocities of the second World War, but it is the daily individual acts of cruelty perpetrated upon the citizens here that really struck me as especially horrific, exactly because they were done by individuals who could have refused to become monsters.

Monuments like these two below make me realize that there really are monsters in human form. Yes, all war is hell, and the human instinct for self-preservation is strong, but those who carried out these acts were not doing them out of self-defence, and “just following orders” is not an excuse for murder and genocide.

The plaque below the wall remnant, with its scarring of bullet holes, reads “Here, on October 26, 1943, the Germans killed about 30 people in a street execution by firing squad. The first public executions in German-occupied Warsaw took place on 26 October, 1943, shortly after SS-Brigadeführer Franz Kutschera became the commander-in-chief of the SS units and German police forces in Warsaw.The victims were local residents captured at random in street roundups. Executions were announced through loudspeakers and on posters put up in the streets in an attempt to increase the sense of fear.”
An adjacent monument marking the spot where 40 more people were killed on November 11, 1943.

One has to pause, cry, and breathe.

Around the corner from our apartment is an imposing building that is the Field Cathedral of the Polish Army, the main garrison church of Warsaw and the representative cathedral of the entire Polish Army.

It was also a victim of the razing of the city.

1945.
Today.

Inside, on either side of its chancel, are two memorial chapels.

The sign (in both Polish and English, thankfully) on a wall adjacent to the Katyń Chapel explains the significance of each of its elements. It was yet another reminder of Poland’s vulnerability to attack from both Nazi Germany and Russia.

The stained glass window at the other end of the chapel/mausoleum is reflected in the glass protecting the altar area.
The buttons surrounding the icon, with the skull behind it faintly visible.
Soil from Smoleńsk in the memorial to the 2010 disaster.

Across the street from the cathedral is the Museum of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.

12 tons of ashes of murdered Poles.

I read this and wanted to weep. And then instead I got angry thinking about present day putative “leaders” who talk about bombing entire civilizations. Have we learned nothing?

In the museum’s lobby is a model of what the neighbourhood in which we are currently living looked like after Himmler’s monstrous orders were carried out.

On our side street, on a building reconstructed after the war: the site of 50 more executions.

And just a few doors down:

We consciously chose not to visit the concentration camps located near Warsaw during our visit. Those places have a history I’m all too familiar with. Warsaw was less known to me.

There were once monsters here. Now there is beauty all around.

This city is the majestic phoenix that literally rose from ashes.

Its spirit enchanted us, so much so that we cancelled our planned Scandinavian cruise next spring and have already confirmed a return visit next May.

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