Heller High Poland Pilgrimage:  Warsaw

by Lila Herzig,      11^th grade,         Cincinnati

Our class touring the Warsaw Jewish cemetery

Let me preface this blog by saying that Warsaw is not a pretty city. It is block and hostile and grey. Even in nice weather, it was unpleasant to look at. I bet it was pretty before it was decimated by the Germans, but we must not dwell on the past (as if that isn’t the focus of the whole trip). Sorry if this blog is rather dry. We did so much in one day and because of that, I’m trying to stick to facts.

It’s day one in Poland.  We were up and on the bus at 1:15 AM. We were at our first stop of the day, the Warsaw Jewish Cemetery by 10:00 AM. Needless to say, we should have been exhausted. But strangely, we all seemed energetic at the cemetery. 

One thing to understand is that the Poland trip was not full of numbers, statistics, timelines, and names. We did that all in the week before the trip. During the trip, we focused on culture, personal stories, hands-on experiences, etc. to truly understand the scope of what was lost in Poland. 

We had been told constantly that we were going to the cemetery to celebrate life, not death. The recognition of death in Poland would come in the following days, when we delve into the Holocaust. But on this first day, the locations are all about the massive Jewish community in Poland. We had to learn about what we lost before we could understand the tragedy of the Holocaust in Poland.

Grave of Ludwig Zamenhoff, the creator of the Esparanto language

Monument to the heroic Janusz Korczak in the Warsaw jewish cemetery

In the cemetery, our teacher David led us around to different gravestones of significant Polish Jews, as well as a few memorials and statues. There was a strange mix of Polish and Jewish culture there: there were wreaths and colorful glass lanterns that were very Polish/Christian, as well as Jewish memorial symbols like stones and yahrzeit candles; some of the graves were very assimilated (the tombstones were decorated with carved vases and pillars and the writing was in Polish) and others were more traditional (Jewish symbolism on gravestones and the writing was in Yiddish or Hebrew). Some graves had Hebrew and Polish text, showing assimilation and connection to Judaism. The cemetery goes for farther than the eye can see--it’s massive. It was beautiful, though: the graves near the front were elaborate and well-kept, but the farther back we went, the more eroded and overgrown the graves were. 

A sewer grate inside the the Warsaw Jewish cemetery

The people David introduced us to at the cemetery varied widely in everything except for the fact that they were Jewish. We met Berek Sonnenberg, a philanthropist; Adam Czerniakow, the leader of the Judenrat (Jewish police) in the Warsaw Ghetto; Esther Kaminska, a Yiddish actress and producer; Y.L. Peretz, a famous Yiddish author (Warsaw was the capital of Yiddishkeit before WWII); Ludwig L. Zamenhof, the inventor of the Esperanto language and an avid pacifist. 

There was a memorial for child smugglers made of bricks from the ghetto wall, one for The Bund (the Jewish socialist organization), and for Janusz Korczak (child psychologist and author--he chose not to escape in order to stay with the children from his orphanage until they were killed in Treblinka). 

memorial to the Bund Jewish socialist organization that fought in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising

Our class saw a couple of mass graves, outlined by painted rocks, of victims in the Warsaw Ghetto. During the war, the cemetery, which was far too large for the Nazis to destroy, was used as a meeting space where they could sneak through the cemetery grates or pose fake funerals as a cover for clandestine activities of the resistance. 

We also learned about Yizroel Szpielman, a Polish Jew currently working to archive the entire cemetery so that Poles can find their Jewish ancestors (a massive undertaking).

In the afternoon, we visited the last remaining piece of the Warsaw ghetto wall. There, we spoke about the horrible conditions of the ghetto: food rations that were impossible to survive on, awful diseases, and overcrowding. One third of Warsaw’s population was relegated to an area making up 3% of Warsaw’s land. We also saw photographs from the ghetto--it was well-documented by Nazis and Jews alike. Unfortunately, that section is in a residential area, and a Polish man who lives in the building yelled at us to get out of his window, despite the fact that many Jewish groups surely go there every day. But if we let that stuff get to us all the time, we would be miserable, so we moved on.

A remaining fragment of the former Warsaw Ghetto wall in a residential neighborhood

We made our way to the infamous Umschlagplatz (the gathering place where the Jews waited to be shipped off to the Treblinka extermination camp in 1942). Many Jews were killed at this platform before they even boarded the train. There we spoke about iberleben, a Yiddish term meaning “living above.” It refers to spiritual resistance during the Holocaust, as opposed to physical/violent resistance.

The Warsaw Umschlagplatz memorial marking the site of deportations to Treblinka

We then went on a “memorial walk” full of information plaques about different Polish-Jewish WWII/Holocaust heroes in Warsaw. I’m not going to bore you guys too much, so I’ll just make a quick list. I encourage you to look up whoever you’re interested in. 

• Warsaw Ghetto Uprising’s ripple effect throughout Europe--inspired many resistance forces against Nazi occupation.
• Yitzhak Katznelson--author
• Janusz Korczak--child psychologist, author, and orphanage operator
• Icchak Nyssenbaum--Rabbi, religious Zionist, encouraged community structure in ghetto
• Frumka Płotnicka--one of many couriers who pretended to be gentiles and brought intelligence back to the ghetto
• Pawel Frankel--Beitar (revisionist Zionist youth group) member and leader in Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
• Meir Majerowicz--commander of the Jewish fighting organization called the ŻOB, also leader in Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
• Miła 18 Memorial--site commemorating final headquarters of ŻOB during ghetto uprising (Teens took charge because of the leadership structure already in place in youth groups, as well as their general adaptability in comparison to more adjusted adults who were suddenly forced from their jobs.)
• Mordecai Anielewicz--leader of youth group HaShomer HaTzair (Zionist youth group) and of the ghetto uprising
• Shmuel Zygelboim--Jewish politician in Polish government in exile (in England during WWII) and representative of The Bund, who took his own life in solidarity with the Jews slaughtered in Poland
• Emmanuel Ringelblum--Jewish historian who meticulously archived the Warsaw Ghetto through photos, diaries, official documents, etc. which was hidden in milk jars buried throughout the ghetto (nicknamed the “oneg shabbat” archives)

Warsaw is an interesting and multi-layered city that still has many homages to the Jewish community that once thrived there. However, no memorials were erected to Polish Jewry until the end of the Soviet occupation of Poland in the 1990s. It is a tragedy in which there was so much Polish and Jewish life and culture that was all destroyed. The Poles were able to rebuild. The Jews were not. But no culture was left unscathed.