Sunday, July 5, 2015

Day 4 - Warsaw

(Beth) Today was our first day in Warsaw and held some unexpected surprises. Our first stop was the Gestapo Headquarters Museum at the Department of Education in the government district, but after wandering around the block for about ten minutes, we finally found the entrance and were stonewalled by a sign indicating that the museum was closed for construction. We found another museum to explore instead: the Museum of the History of Polish Jews (POLIN) with a special exhibit exploring the cultural history going back for a thousand years.  The exhibit was far more extensive than anything we were expecting.

The first section of the exhibit included ancient texts dating back to the eleventh century, describing how the Jews came to settle in Poland. Since the beginning, the Jewish people documented needing the king’s protection through centuries of conflict against Christians. Each year students have asked me why the Nazis targeted the Jews, baffled and unable to grasp WHY. My response to their questions always addresses the social, political, and economic effects of World War I, focusing primarily on effect in Germany. But after spending several hours exploring this exhibit, I will be able to explain the anti-semitism preceding the Holocaust for a thousand years. Many of the Jews left Germany centuries before the Holocaust to escape persecution. What they found in Poland was far better than what they experienced in Germany, but the conflict between the Jews and Christians was always present, at times extremely violent. The anti-semitism of the Holocaust was more than just a post-World War I German problem, and I realized how much I have been naively oversimplifying this for my students. It’s so much more complicated than even a small museum exhibit could capture.

(Allyson) One aspect that I found troubling at the museum was how quickly the German occupants in Poland began limiting the freedoms of the Jewish people in Poland. We saw several notices that had been published by Germans and distributed throughout Poland dating back to the late 1930s regarding the need for Jewish people to register themselves, begin “bowing down” to German authorities, and keep curfew hours. For example, in April of 1940 a notice was sent throughout Poland stating that the German population curfew was 11:30pm, the Polish population curfew was 10:30pm, and the Jewish population curfew was 9:00pm. Remembering that these curfews were set in Poland were astounding. Germans, the “outsiders” in the country, retained the most freedom, whereas the freedom of the Polish and Jewish members of the communities was severely hindered. Once these freedoms began being restricted, it was only a matter of time before ghettos were created, and eventually concentration camps were formed.

As today is the 4th of July, this concept of freedom stuck with me this evening. It’s impossible to read the news these days without encountering some sort of debate regarding what constitutes “basic human rights” and what it means to have freedom… of choice, of religion, of who to marry, etc. As I tend to be someone who doesn’t like having strong opinions on politics, I couldn’t help but think about how learning about this time in history will impact my current views of what’s going on in our world.  


(Ashley) While walking through the exhibit, it was extremely apparent how the passive actions or rather inaction of many led to the Holocaust. It only took a few Nazi leaders to set up death camps like Auschwitz, but it took the inaction of millions to allow those few leaders to succeed in decimating the Jewish population. After progressing through the years of 1939-1945, we went through the rooms relating to the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. However, despite the Holocaust, the anti-semitism hasn’t stopped. Jews were still persecuted and many of those who tried to return home after surviving the Holocaust, were murdered for attempting to reclaim their homes. Or they were driven out of their home country and were denied visas into others such as the USA. We saw newspapers revealing that a ship with Jewish immigrants to the UK was denied and bounced around until they were sent back to Germany of all places! It was extremely disheartening to see that the world didn’t respond with compassion after such an awful atrocity, but instead continued with the hatred from the past.

At the end of the exhibit, there were videos showing changes in Poland and how anti-semitism was fought in the 90s and 2000s, which gave me a little hope. But, after we left the museum and were exiting the subway station, I noticed that the man in front of me on the escalator had a swastika tattoo on his ankle. I actually gasped when I saw it. After everything we have seen in the last 3 days, that sight was truly nauseating and only highlighted that anti-semitism is still a problem and that passivity isn’t an option.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks again for a wonderful accounting of your thoughts!

    ReplyDelete