Hangover, Moldovan Style; Seeing the Ghetto

Photo: A fellow visitor takes in the memorial to the Ghetto Uprising in Warsaw.

2007 threatened to start poorly for my wife and I, as she awoke with a stuffy nose (perhaps too much windy, chilly winter weather) and I awoke with a bit of a hangover (perhaps too much Moldovan champagne.) Fortunately, the staff at our (overpriced) hotel did not seem to have awoken with either, and managed to procure for us a respectable breakfast buffet of comparable quality to what we’d had in Gdansk. (Various mayonnaise-based salads, sausages, breads, and the normals array of meats, cheeses, and vegetables). I think my first good laugh of the day came when I saw one of my fellow hotel patrons – clearly more hungover than myself – pouring himself glass after puny glass of watery juice into the comically undersized cups provided by our dear hotel staff.

Aside from that, however, there were few laughs today, as we spent the better part of our free time on a walking tour that took us primarily to monuments related to the various World War Two atrocities that occurred in Warsaw. Among them: A monument dedicated to the Poles who perished in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, a monument to those who were killed or took their own lives in the 1943 Ghetto Uprising, a memorial to the leader of the Ghetto Uprising and the Umschlagplatz, or the place where Jews were rounded up and forced into wagons headed to Treblinka. All but the first of these memorials were situated within the grounds of the former Ghetto, traces of which have completely vanished to the eyes of the unfamiliar. In place of the Ghetto are dozens of "modern," post-war, Soviet-style block houses, separated by wide boulevards and often excessive greenspace. This in itself is eerie, because it’s obvious that these buildings would not be here had Warsaw – its inhabitants and the physical place itself – not been savagely demolished between the years 1939 and 1945. I found myself at a loss – to say anything when visiting these places seems to almost mimic the grave and tragic events that occurred there, but to say nothing feels insensitive and, of course, massively depressing. As a tourist it’s hard to imagine what it must be like for those who actually work and live in and around these places. The degree to which these important – but highly disturbing – memorials and monuments dominate the cityscape and the aesthetic is considerable, although one assumes that after repeated contact with such landmarks, the effect diminishes. However, that can’t really be what the creators intended. How can the effect of such ethical and humanitarian mistakes ever really be diminished?

At any rate, we broke up our visits to these places with long stretches of walking – not on purpose, but out of convenience really – which had the effect both of enhancing the experience (giving us a feel for the dimensions of the Ghetto as well as a period of time to reflect while walking between the sites) and of wearing us out (we walked about 15 km in five hours or so.) At night we came back to the hotel for a simple meal of bread, cheese and yogurt (as well as a Zubr or „Bison“ beer for me) and for some much-needed rest.