Tour of the Jewish Ghetto

A sobering but important tour- we took a three-hour bus/walking tour of the area of Warsaw that used to contain the Jewish ghetto created by the Nazis during WWII. The tour was arranged by the embassy for a cool but sunny Sunday which coincidentally, was the anniversary of the Jewish Uprising.

The headstones (matsevah) are from the large Jewish cemetery that the Germans, for some reason, did not obliterate as they did the rest of Warsaw. Sadly, the graves are overgrown with trees and decaying plant debris because most of the relatives of the interred were killed in the war; there is no one left.

This plaque is on the memorial at Umschlagplatz which is where hundreds of thousands of Jews were loaded onto cattle cars for transport to Treblinka for immediate death. Treblinka was not a concentration camp because it contained only crematoriums.

One of the few remaining pieces of the original wall that was built to enclose the ghetto. The wall was erected to a height of approximately nine feet (level with the top of the plaque). This section is higher because it was later used as a wall of a building. Jews "living" in the ghetto were allocated 180 calories per day, assigned about ten per room, and not proveded with real medical care. The German goal was that the Jews would die but when it wasn't happening fast enough, they were shipped to crematoriums.
April 19, 1943, for Hitler's birthday, the Germans entered the ghetto with the goal of eliminating the remaining Jews and destroying the ghetto. I believe this coincided with Passover. The Jews fought back and thus began the Uprising.

Umschlagplatz memorial.

The Jewish Ghetto monument. The flames are not always lit but as I said, this day was the anniversary of the Jewish Uprising so there were camera crews in place and soldiers were practicing for a wreath-laying ceremony.