Ghetto and Jewish Life, Warsaw

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It was difficult to comprehend the sight of this monument on first arrival. The first thing I noticed was how huge the paved square was with its many benches to sit in quiet contemplation. The surrounding area near the edge of the square was devoid of any buildings - all gone and replaced with a grassed area. Few people were about as we sat in brilliant sunshine with thoughts too difficult to voice, even the birds seemed strangley quieter here............
The Jewish uprising in April 1943 was their last desperate effort to fight back ........... but who can fight against tanks?
The statue was unvieled in 1948 in the midst of the ruins - even today looking at this place with the communist concrete blocks behind just leaves you speechless. There is a commemorative path marked with black marble blocks which leads to Umschlagplatz - the place which marks these poor souls last journey by train to Treblinka

Founded in 1806, the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw is not just an interesting necropolis of the Polish Jews. It is a tragic reminder of the horrors of the Holocaust. Many of the graves in the cemetery are only symbolic, of the Jewish people murdered in concentration camps such as Auschwitz or Treblinka. Their bodies could not be buried by their families, who either knew nothing of their fate or died in the camps with them. Another reminder of the tragic fate of Polish Jews is an area in the cemetery marked with white stones - a mass grave of the victims of the Ghetto Uprising in 1943, when 13 thousand Jews were killed and many more deported to concentration camps. There are also some graves of those Jews who had managed to escape their fate then but were killed in the Warsaw Uprising a year later.
In the photo you can see the symbolic grave-monument to Janusz Korczak, whose real name was Hirsz Goldszmit, a great educator and friend of children, who not only devoted his life to them but also did not leave them in the tragic moments of their death in the concentration camp in Treblinka. Having been offered freedom by the Nazis, he decided to stay with his charges and died with them. A truly great man!

The present Jewish Cemetery was not the first such cemetery to be founded in Warsaw. Already in the Middle Ages there was a Jewish cemetery right beyond the Old Town walls, where Krakowskie Przedmiescie starts nowadays. In the 18th century another Jewish cemetery was founded in Targowek. That cemetery was later largely destroyed by the Nazis, with the headstones used for road construction, in an attempt to erase all Jewish traces from the earth. It still remains a closed area, a ruin overgrown by trees whispering of its past, but the Foundation of the Nissenbaum family, which has now been put in charge of it, has managed to save around 1000 tombs.
The cemetery in Okopowa was founded in 1806 and, at first, was to serve only the wealthier Jews, the others still being buried in Targowek. Even so, the number of burials was so large that the old graves had to be replaced with new ones every 50 years. At first, men and women were buried in separate parts of the cemetery. Nowadays this rule is not observed any more. The first headstones (matzevas) were put there to mark the location of the grave to prevent Jewish 'priests', who had to protect their purity, from stepping on impure ground - that of a grave.
The inscriptions on the headstones had to be in Hebrew until 1858, when Polish, Russian or German ones could be added to the Hebrew.

The kind of tombstone allows to determine whether the deceased came from a traditional or an 'assimilated' Jewish family. The wealthy assimilated (sometimes also called 'progressive' ) families often erected real monuments of granite or marble to commemorate their dead. So, there are three types of tombstones in the Jewish Cemetery: simple headstones (matzevas), sarcophagi - for important figures of Jewish life, and, finally, the so-called 'ohels' - a kind of stone or wooden 'houses' erected for saintly rabbis.
Some of them are real works of art, representing styles popular at that particular time ,e.g., Egyptian, modernist or Empire.

The motifs and designs on the headstones in the Jewish Cemetery all have symbolic meanings. Many of them make a reference to Judaism, but there are also others, like birds, fruit bowls, wreaths. There are signs of mourning, like a broken tree or a candle, a herd of cattle without a shepherd or a ship as the word ship in Hebrew also has another meaning, that of moaning in grief. There are also figures of Biblical animals - the lion, the tiger, the stag and of some legendary ones, like the griffin and the leviathan, all of them representing qualities of character that glorify the deceased.
As no images of humans are allowed in Judaic art, the human figure has been replaced by the picture of a hand. Two hands in the characteristic gesture of Judaic blessing can be found on graves of rabbis or saintly people. A money-box with a hand can be found on the graves of benefactors.
Other symbols refer to the dead person's job or profession. In the photo you can see the grave of the actor Chewel Buzgan (d.1971) with the images of a hand, a mask and a lute.

The Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw is the last resting place of many outstanding personalities not only of Jewish life, but also of people who made great contribution to the 19th and 20th century Polish history, science and culture. Here lie Ludwik Zamenhof - the creator of esperanto, Jakub Natanson - a professor of chemistry at what is now Warsaw University, Hipolit Wawelberg - the co-founder of the Warsaw Technical University, editor of Sienkiewicz's works and one of the founders of the Warsaw monument to Adam Mickiewicz. And many many others.......Let's leave a little stone on each of their graves, as Jewish people do, instead of flowers.
In the picture, the grave of Ester Rachel Kaminska (d.1925) - the founder and actress of the Jewish Theatre. The tombstone on her grave is a real masterpiece sculpted by Szymon Kratka.

This is the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes. In 1943 a small group Jews revolted from inside the Warsaw Ghetto. Their effort while heroic was futile and met ruthlessly by the Nazis with overwhelming force. Standing there on a spectacular sunny day before the moving black and white marble memorial in the exact location where these horrible events occurred it was difficult imagine that was possible. You should see Virtual Tourist PolishChick for an excellent account of the events which occurred and a moving local perspective on the memorial. Every photo I have ever seen of the memorial shows fresh flowers at the base of the sculpture. The memory is being kept appropriately fresh as well.

The Umschlagplatz Memorial commemorates the more than 300.000 Jewish people who were transported from here to the concentration camps of Treblinka during WWII.

Directions:
The Umschlagplatz Memorial is located on the former northern boundary of the Warsaw Ghetto at ul. Stawki, close to the intersection with ul. Dzika.