July 27 POLIN Museum (Day 304)
We chose one museum to visit today, of the many museums found in Warsaw. The POLIN Museum is a relatively new museum, opened in 2014, it tells the history of Polish Jews over a thousand year period, from the middle ages until the present. The building is in the middle of what was the main Jewish quarter of the city, ultimately the Jewish Ghetto of Warsaw, walled off by the Nazis in 1940.
In the plaza in front of the museum is the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, erected in 1948. It commemorates the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis in 1943 after the “Final Solution” had begun.
The museum building, opposite the monument, is imposing and somewhat foreboding.
The thousand year history of Jews in Poland is compellingly displayed via artifacts, paintings, models, audio and visual narratives, and immersive settings. We spent several hours following the winding galleries on a chronological journey from the medieval Jewish diaspora eastward through the ‘Golden Age’ of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the 15th to the 17th centuries. This era saw relative stability, tolerance and even protection of religious minorities in the Christian state. The Jewish community flourished, but was always regulated and subject to severe restrictions and prejudices.
This recreation of a wooden Jewish Synagogue displays the artistry of the renaissance era.
A closeup of the ceiling shows intricate detail. You might notice some astrological references!
This era saw many elaborate wooden Synagogues built. Wood was used not only because it was readily available, but getting permission from the Christian authorities to build a masonry or stone Synagogue was very difficult. Before WWII when the wooden synagogues were deteriorating they were photographed and studied by a scholar who was murdered in the Holocaust. His work was revived after the war by a Polish couple, Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka, and their book “Heaven’s Gates, influenced this recreation of one of those Synagogues. Virtually all of these Synagogues were completely destroyed by the Nazis.
When the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth declined, it’s territories were divided between Prussia, Austria and Russia, and Jews were subject to more restrictions based on who’s partition they landed in.
The 3 monarchies under which the Polish Jews were subjected. Left; Frederick II of Prussia. Middle; Emperor Franz of Austria (also known as Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor). Right; Catherine the Great of Russia.
We continued through more galleries detailing everyday life of the Jews, their influence on, and influences by, their Christian neighbors and overall Polish culture. ‘Poland’ regained it’s identity and territory in 1918 after WWI with the defeat of Prussia (a part of Germany by then) and Austria-Hungary, and the revolution in Russia. Eventually we arrived at the galleries detailing the beginning of WWII, which started on September 1, 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. A new nightmare was then visited upon Jews in Poland and all of Europe.
The persecution especially of Jews by the Nazis and the Christian Poles was systematic and brutal.
The practice of ethnic or any social “cleansing” follows a well documented playbook;
Identify a group to be scapegoated; Jews, Gypsies, Blacks, Gays, Trans, Women, ‘degenerates’, disabled, immigrants, -insert group here-. Make sure you identify them as the perpetrators of whatever economic or health problem that is upsetting, like plague, COVID, recession, depression, unemployment, drug addiction, inequality of wealth, drought, etc.
Humiliate the group; call them cockroaches, stupid, rapists, murderers, drug dealers, always speak in terms of ‘us versus them’.
Label the group(s) to readily identify them; use color of skin, accent or lack of, ethnicity, type of job, shape of nose, clothing they wear, you name it. Make them wear an identifying mark or clothing.
Force them into degrading positions; put them in cages, put a knee on their neck, deny them dignity or autonomy in choices of everyday life.
Separate them from society; physically by forcing them to live certain places, deny them freedom of movement, entry into public spaces, use of facilities, make them use separate facilities because they will ‘contaminate’ your facilities.
and finally Plunder; take everything from them, their labor, children, possessions, life.
Adam Czerniaków, the man holding the papers, was a member of the Polish Senate when Poland surrendered to the Nazi invaders in 1939. The Nazis made him head of the 24 member Jewish Council (Judenrat), responsible for implementing German orders in the new Jewish ghetto. The Warsaw Ghetto was closed to the outside world on November 15, 1940. Czerniaków died by suicide the day after the order to “resettle” the Jews from the ghetto to Treblinka was enacted.
The ‘Final Solution’. It was no coincidence that Auschwitz and Treblinka death camps were set up in Poland, near Warsaw in particular. Warsaw was the epicenter of the Jewish population in Europe, the largest concentration of Jews, and relatively isolated from the prying eyes of the world, insulated by the neighboring territories the Nazis had invaded.
The Nazi architects of the ‘Final Solution’.
To these men the Jews and the other groups that they identified as non-aryan or perpetrators of vague crimes against aryan society, were no longer human beings, not people, just a problem to eliminate, en masse. By the way, their victims had property; bank accounts, houses, furniture, clothes, jewelry, even gold fillings in their teeth, all of which was confiscated, looted, plundered, stolen, to the enrichment of the Nazis.
This is the hardest post I have written. We know the history, but to be in the place where it occurred, to walk the streets where it happened makes it all the more real. To read the words and to know that the playbook is not being rewritten, it is being used almost verbatim, right now, right in the streets we walk now, today, on our televisions, in our living rooms, even by a political candidate for the highest position in the land. Shame, Shame, Shame on us if we let it happen again!
“…while monuments are important for commemoration and memory, knowledge and education are the only true ways to combat our propensity to forget.”