There are many ways one can define a life. But none can ever truly establish an accurate description of what it is to be alive, or to live that life. In some way its indescribable, because every life on planet earth is unique.
A time-line can create a list of life events in chronological order. Time and space connected. A linear link between the past, present and future. History teaches us that this line stretches further back and further forward than we can imagine. But imagination is of the highest priority when the present consists of unjustified destruction of life and property. That imagination is built on hope. Hope that lives can be repaired. Property restored.
Camping Motel-Wok, 13K south of the capitol is our base for the next three nights. It’s in easy striking distance via the superb transport system. Buses, trams and metro seamlessly sewn together, like clockwork cogs on a never-ending time and motion machine. Use of the Jakdojade app provides us with an accurate time-line of bus and tram numbers. Plotting each stage and even indicating the walking distance and time to take between stops. With weather set fine we climb on board Bus 146.
Today’s port of call, the Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego – AKA The Warsaw Rising Museum. Dedicated to the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Another event we want to scribe into our historical time-line of WWII.
Worldwide, the French Resistance movement has been made known through all forms of media. Not so the Uprising in Warsaw. The huge labyrinth of rooms and corridors give first hand testimony to the plight of Warsaw and its people, during the Nazi destruction and occupation. We learn how the resistance was formed and how it gradually gathered momentum. Determination from all parts of society galvanised by one unifying aim. To repel the invader. Even young children were engaged in vital activities. Secretly and efficiently, distributing food and communications. Sometimes at a personal cost.
The perpetual rumble of a bomber’s engines, sparks imaginations. Creates a constant background barrage. Attaches a sense of reality to the huge life size Liberator B-24J, poignantly suspended above the main concourse, which links the exhibition’s diverse displays.
In complete contrast, today’s modern Warsaw rises skybound. Cascades of huge glass superstructures confidently face the future. Symbolically, backs turn away from the past. Standing tall. Defiantly. Whispering to one another “Never again shall we succumb to the invader”.
Not all high rise is glass. Completed in 1955, the Palace of Culture and Science at 778ft one of many to rise from the ashes.
We complete our first day with a late afternoon amble along the Royal Route. A cosmopolitan ambience with a mix of shops and entertainers add to feelings of freedom.
It seems the whole city is on the march today, Sunday. An anti-government demonstration, with excess of 100,000 protesters, plans to walk the Royal Route. We change plan. Give the Royal Castle the heave-ho. Second choice Polin Museum, as it happens, a better fit to our WWII time-line.
It’s home to an incredible exhibition. Details 1,000 years of Jewish history in Poland and in particular Warsaw, where the Nazis moved and walled in over 400,000 Jews. Creating a ghetto of hatred, with unbearable consequences. Many of course, shipped out to end their lives inevitably in the gas chamber.
On entry we’re greeted with a full scale security check. Body and bags scanned, airport style. Sadly, it seems the Jewish nation can never fully relax its guard against the hidden and determined foe.
We follow the path of the Jewish diaspora across Europe. Their victories and failures within the changing societies of their time. A nation in vain. Praying and hoping for a Palestinian place to call home.
Each room is given over to a certain aspect of either time, place or custom. Giving a real sense of the importance that lies behind the Moses tradition that’s been handed down and cherished for over three millennia.
The Polin stands within the long dismantled walls of the ghetto. As we walk away in contemplation, we come across one of many ground level reminders. Each delimiting, for most, the boundary of no future.
Again the entertainers are out in force as we search for a restaurant.
According to the owner of Kamienne Schodki Restauracja, we complete our Warsaw experience with the best Polish duck dinner in town.
