Symbolic Cemetery at
Treblinka
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Treblinka
Treblinka is the name of a
remote village in northeastern Poland. It is also the name of
a Nazi death camp to which the Jews from Poland and other countries
were sent after the Nazis began to implement their plan to systematically
exterminate European Jewry. It is now the site of a monument
surrounded by 17,000 stones which simulate a graveyard. This
is a spot that is truly off the beaten path and a place that
the Poles say was "forgotten by God". [More]
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Old house in village
of Tykocin
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Tykocin
Tykocin is a village near the
town of Bialystok in northeastern Poland, not far from the extermination
camp at Treblinka. Tykocin is an example of one of the many former
Jewish shtetls or villages in the days before Polish Jewry and
this way of life were completely obliterated by the Nazis. A
Baroque Synagogue, which was built there in 1642 and is considered
one of the finest in Poland, has been preserved and is open to
visitors, along with a museum with displays of Jewish artifacts.
The town square boasts a Baroque Catholic church which dates
back to the 18th century. The town of Tykocin is like an Ethnographic
Museum with many charming houses from a vanishing past. [More]
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Birthplace of Marie
Curie in Warsaw
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Warsaw
The largest city in Poland
and the capital of the country, Warsaw has become a modern city
which doesn't look much different from any big city in America,
but still retains historic buildings and monuments from a bygone
era. The city was 80% destroyed by the Germans during World War
II, but the Old Town has been lovingly restored and is now an
authentic replica of the past. Before World War II, Warsaw was
the home of 375,000 Jews, one third of the population of the
city. It once had the largest Jewish population of any city in
Europe. One of Poland's most famous citizens was Marie Skladovska,
who was born Nov. 7, 1867 in Warsaw and became Madame Curie when
she married. She discovered radium and was twice awarded the
Nobel prize. [More]
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Monument at site of
Mila 18
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The Warsaw Ghetto
The former Ghetto in which
all the Jews of Warsaw were imprisoned in November 1940 behind
high brick walls is now only a memory. The Ghetto buildings were
100% leveled by the Germans and the area has now been rebuilt
with modern buildings. Today there are only monuments, and a
short section of the original wall, which are painful reminders
of what happened there. The spot where the Jews were assembled
for deportation, and the site of Mila 18 where on April 19, 1943
a handful of Jewish rebels fought the German SS troops are now
commemorated by memorials. [More]
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Cemetery on Walecznych
St. in Lublin
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Lublin
Located in southeastern Poland,
Lublin is now a modern city with a tragic past. Before World
War II, a famous Yeshiva was located there and the city was known
as the "Jewish Oxford." Lublin was once a main population
center for Hasidic Jews, but during World War II, the Jewish
community was completely destroyed. The Jewish New Cemetery in
Lublin has been reconstructed with a symbolic wall and a stunning
memorial building called the Chamber of Memory. During World
War II, Lublin was the headquarters for the Operation Reinhard
extermination camps on the eastern border of German-occupied
Poland. [More]
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Monument at Entrance
to Majdanek Camp
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Majdanek
Majdanek is the Polish name
for Maidanek, a former Nazi Prisoner of War camp and forced labor
camp, which was built in what was then a suburb of Lublin. After
1942, it also had the dual purpose of being an extermination
camp for the Jews. It was the first Nazi concentration camp to
be liberated in the final days of World War II, and had the only
completely intact workable gas chambers to be found by the Allies.
The camp was liberated by Russian and Ukrainian soldiers on Sunday,
July 23, 1944 and Lublin immediately became the capital of the
new Communist regime in Poland. [More]
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Electrified fence and
guard tower at Birkenau
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Birkenau
Birkenau was a huge Nazi concentration
camp, located 3 kilometers from the Auschwitz main camp. It was
here that Jews were sent from all over Europe and over a million
of them died. When it was liberated by Soviet soldiers on January
27,1945, the Germans had abandoned the camp after blowing up
the three remaining gas chambers, leaving behind 5,800 prisoners,
including 611 children. The camp has been left just as it was
in 1945, a vast ghost town of empty barracks and a forest of
brick chimneys that are all that is left of the buildings that
were burned when the camp was abandoned. [More]
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Courtyard in Kazimierz
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Kazimierz
If you've seen Schindler's
List, you've seen Kazimierz, which is portrayed in the movie
as the Jewish walled ghetto set up by the Nazis in nearby Podgorze.
Kazimierz was named after the Polish king who founded the town
just outside Krakow in 1335 and who, coincidentally, invited
the Jews to settle in Poland after they were expelled from Germany
around the same time. Today Kazimierz is recognized as the best
preserved old Jewish quarter in Europe. The oldest surviving
Synagogue in Poland is located there. [More]
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Monument at Plaszow
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Plaszow
Plaszow was one of the numerous
Nazi concentration camps in Poland and was of no particular importance
until it became famous as a result of the movie Schindler's List,
based on a novel about the Jews of the Podgorze ghetto in Krakow
and the Plaszow camp. Oskar Schindler, an ethnic German from
the Sudetenland in what is now the Czech Republic, saved 1098
of these Jews from the sadism of camp commandant Amon Goeth by
setting up a sub-camp at his factory in the Zablocie district
of Krakow. When the Plaszow camp was closed, Schindler made
up a List of 1,100 Jews and bribed Nazi officials to send them
to a new factory which he opened near his home town in what is
now the Czech Republic. His factory became a sub-camp of the
Gross Rosen concentration camp. [More]
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Gas Chamber at Auschwitz I
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Auschwitz
Auschwitz was the first concentration
camp in what is now Poland; it opened in June 1940 at a former
military garrison. The name Auschwitz has become symbolic of
the Holocaust and the genocide of the Jews. It was at the Auschwitz
main camp that Zyklon B, an insecticide, was first tested in
June 1941 and then used for the first mass killing of humans
in a gas chamber on Sept. 3, 1941. Visitors can walk into the
gas chamber which was reconstructed in 1947. [More]
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Catholic Crosses erected
in front of Block 11
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1998 War of
the Crosses
Outside the walls of the former
Auschwitz main camp, and in front of Block 11 where Father Kolbe,
a Catholic saint, was imprisoned, Christian crosses were erected
in September 1998 in a former gravel pit where 152 Polish Catholic
resistance fighters were executed by the Nazis. Jewish leaders
demanded that the crosses be removed because Auschwitz is the
place where the first Jews were gassed when the Nazis carried
out Hitler's Final Solution. [More]
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Old log house in Poland
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Polish houses
& Little Chapels
The road from Krakow to Auschwitz
passes through many villages with picturesque wooden houses dating
back to the 18th century; some of them are constructed of logs
like the houses in the American pioneer days. There are many
charming houses with a cottage garden in the front. At every
crossing or dangerous place in the road stands a "little
chapel" or Catholic statue of the Virgin Mary to guard over
travelers. [More]
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