Visible History

To me, one of the striking things about being in Europe is how close you can be to things you learn about in history class, read about or have just heard about your entire life.  There are an abundance of historical sites in the US, but being in a relatively young nation they don't have the same historical heft as, for example, the Coliseum in Rome.

Last year, I was reading a book that took place in various parts of the world in the decades following World War II. Sections of the book took place in Warsaw, and it was interesting for me that I knew exactly where the landmarks mentioned are. I happened to be in Berlin when I reached the part of the book about the construction of the Wall, which added another dimension to my visit of the memorial park there.

With it's complicated history, Poland has quite a few fascinating stories to tell and the country has made quite an effort to make the history visible.

Concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Majdanek are good examples. Just after it was liberated, a museum was founded on the grounds of Majdanek making it the first memorial and museum on the site of a camp. The area is largely intact and is said to include all of the victims' belongings found there upon liberation. Auschwitz was dismantled to a degree after the war but became a museum in 1947 and I recently read an article about the painful process of maintaining the exhibition without diminishing the authenticity. Such preservation was not possible with Treblinka, which was leveled by the Nazis before the Soviet army arrived, but its absence makes conserving the others more necessary.

Some sites in Warsaw that give a chilling view into history are the former Gestapo headquarters office and what remains of Pawiak prison, both of which are museums now. The two are linked because many of the people held in the prison were transported one or more times to the Gestapo office and one of the displays in both museums shows a video simulation of the route taken between the two. Much of the prison was demolished following the Warsaw Uprising but what could be preserved has been. Preservation went so far as to create a bronze cast of a tree that stood at the entrance, which replaced the actual tree when it died.  

The remains of the prison gate

Replica of the tree with badges of remembrance

The Gestapo office was in a part of the city that was used by the occupying army and therefore not destroyed, and part of it is an office area much as it would have looked during the war, including an SS officer coat on a coat rack and a framed picture of Hitler. The building that houses the museum is, fittingly, the headquarters of the Ministry of Education.

While the Old Town section of Warsaw is mostly reconstruction,  buildings that were used by the Nazi regime were not destroyed (the beautiful building where my gym is had been a bank before the war and was used by the Wehrmacht. 

Former State Agricultural Bank Building

Many buildings around the city have descriptive plaques mentioning the architect, the style and whether it is an original structure or rebuilt. One of the more interesting ones is on the Polonia Palace Hotel, which was used by the German army to house officers during the occupation, was not destroyed and became a mini-UN afterward when nineteen nations had their diplomatic missions there. 

As I wrote previously, there are memorials to the Warsaw Uprising all over the city and an information-packed museum, while there are also markers in many places where the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto once stood.  Almost every building in the ghetto was demolished before the German army departed but others from the period have been left with visible bullet holes, bomb damage and other scars.

Everything I describe above relates to World War II, but that is not the only history on display in Poland. Wilanow Palace was not destroyed and allows a view back to the 17^th century, Wawel Castle in Krakow is from the 16th and Malbork Castle near Gdansk dates back to the 13th. 

Wilanow Palace

Wawel Castle

Malbork Castle

You can also see evidence of the more recent Communist era history and its unraveling. There is a museum on the site of the Gdansk shipyard, the birthplace of the movement that eventually led to the end of communism in Poland, that provides a history lesson about the period and its end. 

European Solidarity Centre

Another view into the Communist era can be had by apartment hunting as some of the places built during that time have not been renovated. Not long ago I went to the Museum of Life under Communism, one part of which displays typical apartment furnishings from that time. 

The living room display

While it may seem like a kitschy spoof (heightened by the ABBA music playing in the background), it was very similar to an apartment I looked at when I was house hunting last year. I did not want to rent that apartment for a long period of time, but I would have loved to stay there for a few days. 

One aspect of historical preservation that is inconsistent though (at least from what I have seen in Warsaw) is architectural preservation. Many areas, such as where the Warsaw Ghetto was, were only built up gradually over the years and don't have remarkable buildings. In other areas, older buildings that were not completely demolished were rebuilt and others survived the war. I just moved into an apartment in a nicely restored building from about 100 years ago and I notice a lot of others on the street and the surrounding area that either have been or are being restored.

My new old building

In other parts of the city, however, there are buildings with good bones and character but that are currently run down. In one neighborhood (close to stops on the new metro line) t seems that no preservation is likely and the properties will be torn down and replaced by newer, bigger buildings. 

There is a lot of new construction in the area of this lonely place

Recently, however, a piece of history in Warsaw was erased - the first McDonald's that opened in Poland after the fall of Communism. While this may not seem like a big event, I am told that, to Poles, it was huge. People got dressed up for the occasion and stood in line for hours to experience a true symbol of the West.

Opening Day - June 1992

The location, and an adjoining department store that I loved browsing in, have been torn down to make way for a new office building. If the architectural renderings are to be believed, both will be revived in the new building but I think something will be lost in the process. 

Maybe a lesson can be learned from these famous quotes:

• Edmund Burke: "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it,"
• George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,"
• Winston Churchill: "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it,"

The lesson may be that if the McDonald's doesn't reopen, Warsaw will be doomed to get a Chick-Fil-A.