The Journey back
Day 4
4th day: 20 October 2005
We woke up the next day and went downstairs to the lobby to have breakfast. Breakfast was decent, though it was lacking vegetables and yellow cheese. We checked with Tomash on the option to move to the 3-star hotel next to us. Turned out it was full. We decided to go have breakfast at the other hotel which was supposed to be better.
Tomash arrived today with a new car. It was a smaller, white, Ford mini-van. This would be our mode of transportation until the end of the trip. Our first stop on the fourth day was the Jewish History Institute in Warsaw named after Emmanuel Ringelbaum.
When we entered the institute, we first turned to the archive located on the second floor. Tomash knew the place well as he worked there for two years and knew where to take us. Two people tried to help us locate information, but they didn't have any concrete information. Most of the work they were dealing with was related to the Jews in Poland and they didn't deal much with the other communities.
Mom wanted to find out where she was held in Warsaw, after she was brought there by the Russians from the Stutthof area. She had spent 2-3 days in a Joint building. From there she continued - still dressed in the striped night gown from the camps - in a supply train to Slovakia, and from there to Hungary.
We wanted to find out if there were any documents regarding Sarah, and also where the building of the Joint organization was located at that time in Warsaw. As it turned out, there were a few options; one was near the Nożyk Synagogue, the other was across the Visla River. There was no point visiting these old sites as mom didn't remember the appearance of the building and only stayed there a few days before being moved to Warsaw. We went to the floor below us, still inside the Ringelbaum Institute, and in the room next to the museum there were documentary books with names of Jews. We searched for the name Zauber. In these lists we found two names of women. The first was Rozi Zauber (born in 1928), same as Sarah, also from Hungary and located at Bydgoszcz(mom was there and also in Bromberg).
The other name was Irene Zauber. Mom said she did not recognize nor know either of them. Still, we asked to view the personal and original cards of these women, documented them, and took pictures just in case there was a connection.
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From there we continue to the museum for a short tour. We see pictures and paintings of Jewish Polish artists. From there we move to the lower floor of the museum and saw in the exhibition what was found in one of the three milk pitchers that Dr. Ringelbaum managed to preserve. It was dug out of the ground only after the war.
From there we continued to Pawiak Prison. It was an infamous political prison built in 1835 in Warsaw. During WWII, the Germans turned it into a part of the Warsaw concentration camp. It was located inside the Jewish ghetto, though it didn't only contain Jews. It was an old prison and was used by the Tsars of Russia when they ruled Poland. Inside there was a small museum. We went inside only to discover that all the explanations and signage was in Polish, but we were able to use the help and translation of Tomash to make sense of it.
Inside the museum there was a sign stating that pictures were not allowed. Therefore, I had to buy a CD with pictures of the place (with explanations in Polish and German).
There was also a reconstruction of prison cells which were there at the time. It was a reconstruction since the prison, along with most of Warsaw, was destroyed during the bombings of the war.
From the museum we continued to the ghetto walls, or the small part that was left of it.
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We visit the street where the Jews used to live in small, poor houses. From there we continued to the Nożyk Synagogue, the only synagogue left in Warsaw. Since it was close to Sukkot, there was a Sukkah built behind the synagogue for the holiday.
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Near the synagogue there stood the building of the Joint Union (see sign below).
Maybe mom stayed in this building when she was brought to Warsaw from north Poland? Go figure...
We drove through the former Jewish ghetto quarters and Tomash explained what was in each part. He showed us the destruction as well as the ruins upon which the new buildings of Warsaw were built. We stopped near a small shop and bought a few fruits and vegetables for the next couple of days. The prices weren't that expensive since Poland had yet to convert its currency from Zloti to Euro.
From there we continued to the Umschlagplatz (German translation: collection point, or reloading point). It was in the Warsaw Ghetto where Jews were gathered for deportation to the Treblinka extermination camp. This was the deportation point for over 300,000 Warsaw Jews who were sent to their deaths at Treblinka.
It was getting dark when we marched through the 'Path of Remembrance'. We passed by the monuments in memory of:
- Janusz Korczak (this was the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit, a Polish-Jewish children's author, pediatrician, and school teacher. He was an early base of Poland's democratic education system),
- Mordecai Anielewicz who was the commander of Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising from January to May 1943.
- Rabbi Yitzhak Nisnboim who was an author and the last president of Religious Zionism and of the religious Zionist organization The Mizrachi (Merkaz Ruhani),
- There were many more...
We followed the monuments in the 'Path of Remembrance' until we had reached the monument of Nathan Rapoport, who also has a similar monument at 'Yad Vashem' in Jerusalem.
It is at this location that the ceremonies for the Israeli school delegations usually take place.
On our way, we pass a smaller monument that was sculpted in the shape of the front of a sewer drain. It was a memorial for the escape and smuggling of the Jews from the ghetto through the sewer system of Warsaw. This monument was built right after the war, even before the Rapoport monument. It was built by those who survived the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Among those brave people was Yitzhak Zuckerman (nicknamed Antek Zuckerman), who was one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He was the deputy of Mordecai Anielewicz.
Mom was getting tired, and at this stage she decided to go rest in the car while we continued touring the area near the monuments for a short while before heading back to the hotel. We walked the streets of Warsaw for quite awhile, it was time to head back to the hotel.
In the picture below Sarah and I are at our 'spacious' hotel room:
Mom fell asleep shortly after the above photo was taken, while I stayed awake. Avi and I decided to go for a night walk and explore the city. We walked a few good kilometers that separate the hotel from the Old City. We sat in a nice coffee shop we found along the way named 'Nowy Swiat.'