Never Underestimate

[Tosh]

Man's inhumanity....and humanity...

 

I am in Warsaw at the moment - it's changed a lot since I first came here on business 10 years ago and anyone planning coming in 2012 for the Euros will have a blast. The Stadium is quite a sight, too.

 

That said, I went for a wander for a couple of hours last night - along Nowy Swiat to the old town. That was largely flattened in 1944 despite being 600 years old and has largely been rebuilt: now a UNESCO site

 

I then wandered out of the north west corner of the old town and came across a sign in the pavement saying that was the line of the Ghetto Wall. The contrast between what was "old" and clearly "new" was stark and I meandered all the way back to the Stalin-esque Cultural Centre in the middle of town. At one point there's a short street which has been left largely untouched since 1944 when the street was in the middle of the big Ghetto (there were 2, one inside the other). Just standing infront of the street and it's contrast with the surroundings was really shocking. I got on Wiki when I got home and spent an hour or so digging into what went on in the Ghetto - It seems that very very few of the old streets still exist as that part of the city was not restored but instead is parks, Gov't buildings and so on.

 

Take 400,000 people, build a wall around them, and close them off. Likely they had about 200 calories of food a day - most of which was smuggled in by kids. Those that died were replaced by others who'd been rounded up. And then decide to relocate them to a place called Treblinka, making the ghetto itself smaller as people were relocated. For the better part of 4 years.....

 

The Polish resistance helped the jews in the ghetto with food, arms and information and inside they had all manner of "community facilities" such as soup kitchens, schools ad even an orchestra as pepole tried to maintain a semblence of normailty and civilisation

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto

 

My mum - and quite likely yours - was alive at the time. Which doesn't make it ancient history. When you look at places like Palestine, what's going on in Syria, and Lybia etc, you really have to wonder whether we have learned anything.....

 

Right, I am off to chat with the guy who runs our business in Poland. He's German

[jimbolala]

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[Kahnee]

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