This is Fr Boguslaw, professor at KUL who was my first contact with Poland and consulted on this program
The only way the photographer gets in the picture: mirrors
The streets of Warsaw
Maybe time for a lunch break (tissue squares for napkins everywhere)
On the streets again
A good guide, once more
Old city center square. (85% destroyed by Hitler to punish Poles for uprising; rebuilt to look like old city again). Outside walls and gate of medieval city
One of the things I found most fascinating about Warsaw was that despite its old appearance, the buildings are actually quite new! 90% of the buildings were destroyed in World War II, but were rebuilt to look as they did originally. Many people saved bricks and stones and materials from the buildings from the time of the destruction, so a number of the buildings and walls actually have some parts of the original buildings.
ReplyDeleteWarsaw was another example of a general theme of rebuilding which we saw throughout Poland. We saw a pattern in our travels through Polish history in which various invaders and interlopers came into Poland and imposed their culture upon the place or tried to wipe out the existing framework of society. Warsaw provided the most graphic example of this in its razing by the Nazis in the 1940s--a very determined effort was made to quash the spirit of the Poles and to eliminate their capital. It is by no means the only example, though. Wawel Castle was damaged under Austrian occupation. The chapel in Lublin castle was plastered over by the Communists. Lithuanian Square is a testament to foreigners marking Poland as their own.
ReplyDeleteBut in each instance of foreign conquest, we also observed evidence of Polish resilience. Warsaw was in ruins, but has now been restored. I think this phenomenon of rebuilding contributes to the national unity and pride we observed. The nation is linked by a long history of suffering and bad geopolitical breaks, but even more so by their efforts to rebuild and rise from the ashes of the Partitions, the Second World War and the Communist occupation. Poland is, as a whole, "bloodied but unbowed," to borrow a phrase from the poem "Invictus." In this way, Warsaw functions as a microcosm for Polish history in general.