What to see of the Warsaw ghetto today

[Makarov]

Excellent thread, I thought I had seen all the sites Worth seeing in the former ghetto, couldn´t be more wrong. Very impressed by wm:s knowledge. By the way, are there any remnants left of the umschlagplatz hiding in the grass or elsewhere? Any former bunkers used by the resistance still accessible?

[PF]

Postscript
Umschlagplatz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Umsch ... Warsaw.JPG
rements of Warsaw Ghetto
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Categ ... saw_Ghetto
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_ghetto

[Makarov]

Thanks PF, But I was looking for something less known remnants so to speak. Regarding Umschlagplatz, are there anything left at all to be seen that could be said was part of the platform/Railway yard, tracks?

[wm]

Thanks Makrov, there are almost 100 structures or their remains that were in the Ghetto. But nothing spectacular, so the eye of the beholder is everything.

The Umschlagplatz is no more, almost:

u.jpg (160.62 KiB) Viewed 2872 times

the two surviving buildings are probably well known, so I'm adding these as formality only:

source: Google Earth

And there is a part of the wall still standing, which divided the night waiting area for the Jews from the gentile part of the Umschlagplatz (between Stawki 10 and Stawki 8):

No bunker or shelter has survive.

[wm]

13.jpg (93.36 KiB) Viewed 2872 times

The Group Thirteen's headquarters, called the Jewish Gestapo.
A Jewish-German enterprise which was fleecing and swindling both the Ghetto and the Third Reich, and fighting for power with the Judenrat.
There were many duo-national enterprises like that in the occupied territories but the Thirteen was in league of its own.

[PF]

Postscript
Link to photograph of Leszno 13 Warsaw in WW II
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org ... The13.html

[Makarov]

Thanks vm!
Didn´t know about the wall, now I got a reason to go back to Warsaw sooner than planned
The google Earth picture, it seems that the tracks were located some distance between today´s monument. This area between them, was that the assembling area Before they were deported?

[wm]

The was a free space there as shown below in photos made in 1935 and 1945, but as far as I know people were only allowed to wait in the school, in the schoolyard, and on the street between those buildings. It would be probably too easy to escape from the rail yard itself.

ap3.gif (489.16 KiB) Viewed 2843 times

In pre-war picture the tracks were censored for security reasons, the monument is marked.

[wm]

The house of Władysław Szlengel, the poet of the Warsaw Ghetto.

szlengel's house.jpg (62.11 KiB) Viewed 2841 times

Szlengel was a popular Polish poet, journalist, song writer, stage actor. He took part in the defense of Warsaw in 1939. Very popular in the Ghetto, produced a large number of songs and poems there.
He died during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising at the age of 28.

On the Tluszcz-Warsaw line,
from the Warsaw-East station,
you leave by rail
and ride straight on …

The journey lasts, sometimes
five hours & 45 minutes,
but sometimes it lasts
a lifetime until death.

The station is tiny.
Three fir trees grow there.
The sign is ordinary:
it’s the Treblinka station.

No cashier’s window,
No porter in view,
No return tickets,
Not even for a million.

There, no one is waiting,
no one waves a kerchief,
and only silence hovers,
deaf emptiness greets you.

Silent the flagpole,
silent the fir trees,
silent the black sign:
it’s the Treblinka station.

Only an old poster
with fading letters
advises:
“Cook with gas.”

With sick and broken heart,
with all my thoughts on the other side
I was sitting alone
next to the telephone.

I think to myself
when I am on duty, waiting
near the telephone in the evening:
I will call someone on the other side.

Suddenly I realize,
my God there is no one I can call.
In nineteen thirty-nine I followed
a different road.

Our paths have parted, and all
the friendships on the other side sank deeply
out of sight. Now you see
there is no one I can call.

Behind the glass pane, an autumn evening.
A gale wind is hurrying
down the road. I think I would like
to call, but there is no one.

My hand picks up the receiver.
The cord shivers.
I dial a familiar number
and her voice answers. The speaking clock.

Look at your death, look at ours,
O how different each is.
Your death – a strong healthy death,
tearing you to pieces.
Your death finds you mid green fields
fertile with blood and sweat.
Your death is a bullet death,
for your country met.
Our death is a stupid death,
in attic or in cellar,
our death is a dog’s own death,
at street corners collared.
Your death’s honoured with a cross,
mentioned in despatches.
Our death is a wholesale death
in a trench, in batches.
Your death, you meet face to face
greeting it half-way.
Our death is a shameful death,
fill the trench – good day!
Your death is a usual death,
human, not too testing,
our death is a rubbished death,
Jewish and very nasty.
Our death to your death is just
a poor and distant kin,
and when your death meets our cheap death
she won’t invite her in.
In blackest night, in mist and gloom,
above the hellish city
two deaths stand shaking angry fists
ranting, and curses spitting.
Upon a wall, a look both ways,
observes this angry strife
one just as greedy, smart and base
and very similar Life.

sources: http://www.zchor.org/szlengel/poems.htm, http://www.antoranz.net/CURIOSA/ZBIOR12 ... lengel.HTM, http://www.themanhattanreview.com/archi ... phone.html

[Makarov]

Thanks again vm, but one thing still puzzles me. According to the map below there are Three tracks designated for deportation A, B and C. Track C is visible in the ariel photo you attached, but A and B is not visible, Why is that? Were the tracks removed by the Germans? And were they built from the beginning with the specific purpose of deportation alongside the existing tracks to the right.

Map source: ARC

[wm]

The tracks were removed (or less likely covered with debris and dust from the fighting) everywhere there. The "trackless" place was simply dirty, maybe coal was unloaded there. The exit from the rail yard shows nothing on the ground.

for comparison, on the other side of the Vistula, controlled by the Soviets, the tracks were visible to the camera.

[PF]

Postscrit
Wladyslaw Szlengel biography
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82ady ... w_Szlengel
What is the street adress of his Warsaw home in photo?

[PF]

1944 picture and 2013 picture of umschlagplatz

http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plik:Warsa ... gazine.jpg
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plik:Ulica ... tz_011.JPG

[wm]

It is Waliców 14.

Another famous resident of that house was Menachem Kipnis: an excellent cantor, collector and expert on Jewish musical tradition, photographer, writer and social activist.
The man who brought to the wider world the idea, alive to this day that Chełm was a village populated entirely by village idiots.

In the Ghetto Kipnis, a wealthy man lived in a front apartment. The less fortunate Szlengel in the sunless back.

A Holocaust survivor Dawid Zylbert lived there. At the age of 12, he fled the Ghetto and was living in a dugout at the bank of the Vistula supported by his elementary school friend with food and clothes stolen from his own family.

In the Warsaw Uprising during a heavy German assault supported by tanks and the Goliath robo-mines, a single Goliath brought down the entire front part of the building.
It can be seen from this angle:

waliców14.jpg (129.9 KiB) Viewed 2816 times

[PF]

Postscript
Thanks for answear!
I ve heard of the tales of the silly People of Chelm..!