Our journey started rudely early on a clear bright morning at Golders Green coach station. Just a few hours later, the full group gathered for the first time at Warsaw airport. We practised numbering off (we definitely needed the practice) and then swiftly left to meet our Polish crew – two drivers, a pilot and security aboard a golden coach. After lunch on the bus we went straight to the Polin Museum.
The challenge was to try and understand 1000 years of Jewish history in Poland in 90 minutes. Thanks to Richard, the Rabbi and the museum guide, we certainly left better informed than we arrived.
The Polin Museum is situated on the site of the ghetto and the striking architecture with flowing curves made us think of water and Jerusalem stone.
We started with the stories and legends of the first Jews to arrive in Poland through the forest. Then we tried to get to grips with the numbers – 3 million Jews spread in 1,000 settlements across the country, a third of some cities’ populations were Jewish. Their stories were told in artefacts, maps, music and pictures, bringing to life the richness and variety of Jewish life across the centuries. In the mocked up shtetl, we were stunned by the beauty of the painted wooden synagogue, challenging our preconceptions with richly coloured paintings including animals and zodiac references. The harder times, restrictions, persecution and bloodshed were also documented.
There’s not much left of the original Warsaw ghetto, which was almost entirely destroyed, but we visited a section of wall and learned how the 450,000 Jews were contained within 1.3 square miles in terrible conditions. Despite this, we heard of acts of resistance, in many different forms (including smuggling a live cow in for shechting). We heard about the solutions leading up to The Final Solution.
The Umschlagplatz was a yard where goods were gathered which was used as a point to round up the Jews from the ghetto before transporting them to Treblinka. Richard showed us a photograph of this happening, as we looked around at the same unchanged buildings we could see in the photo, it made the past seem very close indeed. We were introduced to a child named Halina who lived in the ghetto and whose story we would follow through our trip.
On the Heroes walk and at Mila 18 we met more people who had played a part in Jewish resistance in different ways – smuggling information or armed resistance. It was striking that many resistance fighters were young Jewish youth leaders.
What about those who could not resist, or were given roles within the administration? We discussed how we could not possibly judge anyone’s decisions made at that time under those circumstances, “a choiceless choice”.
We had a thought provoking discussion of the monuments and memorials – who placed them, when and why and how did they make us feel? Our group didn’t warm to the Soviet style Rapaport monument but were intrigued by the Warsaw Ghetto Survivors memorial, designed to look like a sewer opening (how people, information and weapons were smuggled in and out). The letter Bet is written and then empty space – what would the rest of our story be?
An unscheduled stop took us to the Oneg Shabbat memorial – a codename for a group who documented in great detail (intellectual resistance!) what was happening inside the ghetto and buried the archive in milk churns and metal boxes deep underground. It was unearthed on the directions of survivors.
Our delicious dinner at the hotel was very welcome, and just when we thought we had reached the end of a very long day….our leaders had other plans – processing! Like speed dating we swapped partners for quick fire discussions about everything we had seen and heard and how it had impacted us.
An ice cold vodka nightcap in the hotel bar marked the end of an intense, interesting and moving first day.
