3 July Ghetto, Jewish Cemetery

We started our day at this marker that highlights The Warsaw Ghetto, established in 1940 by the Nazis to imprison the Jews. On 19 April 1943, a resistance began that ended 16 May 1943. The Ghetto was destroyed and all remaining people were executed or sent to camps.

We walked over to what was once a football field.

Marcellina translates the marker  that explains this memorial remembers Jews who died in the Warsaw Ghetto as well as Poles executed during the Warsaw Uprising. Bodies were just dumped here.

This is the only monument that pays tribute to both Jews and Poles.

We walked on Okopowa Street along the wall of this huge

 Jewish Cemetery.

And walked through the front gate,

And to the second gate where a mezuzah is on the right just over the red and white plastic tie.

The wall here is made of broken tombstones.

Around the corner is a monument to Janusz Korczak and the orphan children who died at Treblinka.

This tombstone shows a hand putting coins into an alms box and means that the deceased was a generous good man.

Broken candlesticks show that the deceased was a woman.

Broken pillars symbolize a broken life.

Marek Edelman survived the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and went on to fight as a Pole in the Warsaw Uprising. He remained in Poland, becoming a cardiologist,  practicing medicine in Lodz. He also was involved in the Solidarity movement. He died in 2009--after a wonderfully interesting and meaningful life.

This is the grave of  Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, a language which he hoped would unite people all over the world. He was born in Tykocin.

This woman was shot to death by the Nazis in 1943.

Other victims of Nazi atrocities are buried here in this mass grave--an estimated 100,000 victims from Warsaw ghetto.

We saw this man in several places watering plants.

 

It is a an active cemetery--vast, beautiful, peaceful, and verdant place today.

As I post this entry, our trip is over. It has been intense, emotionally and physically exhausting but done with an extremely congenial group and we have had good times together. I have many photos and will try to complete the story of our trip. I hope others in our group will help when I make mistakes. Jestem glupy i stary pani.