PW 1944

[nasza_maggie]

It is the 62nd anniversary of the Uprising in Warsaw, today.

news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/1/newsid_3932000/3932555.stm


www.warsawuprising.com/



Will any of you be going to the commemorations on Plac Krasińskich? Its
amazing in the evening with all the candles...


have any of you been to the museum???
www.1944.pl/index.php?lang=en&lang_time=1

[kylie1]

Would love to, Maggie. We are going to Poland next year (September). My husband
is a World War I and World War II history fanatic. He has got so many books and
it's hard to understand why this particular part of history intrigues him so
much. Perhaps he was a General or a soldier in his previous life? We will
definitely visit the museum! He will be in his paradise.

62 years...hard to believe!

[ja_karola]

This anniversary makes me think of my grandmother whose story I would like to
share with you. She was but a teenager when the war began and she had to risk
her life to complete her secondary studies underground. She then went onto a
chemical school and had to work physically all the while being a member of the
AK. She was a radio communications operator and she almost got caught with
radio transistors in her room (the lady who rented the room to her inadvertently
saved her life). She was arrested once while accompanying a wounded Polish AK
soldier. Right before she was stopped she threw out resistance literature and
pamphlets into the bushes. Otherwise she would have been shot dead right there
and then. In 1945 she was one of the first students to be admitted to the
Medical School in Dentistry in the ruins of Warsaw. It was quite a journey for
her and she has a million anecdotes of how hard her student life was (bed bugs
and rats being constant company in the ruined campus buildings). One incident
that marked my (very elegant may I add) grandma and which for some strange
reason she keeps on repeating is how she had no shoes and the only ugly pair she
owned she had to dye because of their already washed off colour. Well, the dye
was supposed to be brown but it turned red and she had no choice but to wear
them. She was so conscious of them that she would constantly put one leg up in
the air behind her so as to hide them….

She has lived through so much and she witnessed her close ones die or be
transported to the Warsaw ghetto. These topics constantly come up in
conversations with her.

She hates communists to the bone and she never accepted that the country she
fought for was then taken over by Soviet collaborators.

I have pictures of her cleaning up the rubbles of Warsaw with a shovel in her
hands. She was young, beautiful, full of energy and smiling at the possibility
of starting a new life after the war. It’s amazing how this has marked her and
so many of my ancestors who’ve lived through it. It’s funny how among my
friends here in Canada, I am the only one who actually has relatives who’ve
lived through the horror of WWII. During one of her numerous visits to Canada
she was watching the CDN version of MTV with me one day and looking at some of
the videos that depicted attention-seeking provocateur artists wanna-bes with
several colours of dye in their hair, she claimed “people don’t know what to do
with themselves anymore. These youngsters need another war to set their
priorities straight!”.

I now realize that her stories are priceless. She lived through times that I,
as a teenager, could not even imagine. So I’ve decided to videotape her still
vivacious spirit and get her stories on tape. Being an extrovert, she’s of
course all for it and since I’ll be able to visit her more often now that I’ll
be closer to Poland, who knows?…. perhaps she’ll make a killing on YouTube.com.
She has some pretty darn interesting points of view on current politics in
Poland and she keeps up with current events by reading all kinds of politica l
magazines and following the news not to mention attending political meetings and
taking part in discussions. Just as she was a vivid teenager back in her day,
she’s still a fighter and a vivacious 82-year old distinguished lady.

I have not had a chance to visit the museum since its opening, but I’ll make a
point of going there at my next visit to Warsaw.

[sobieski010]

Actually I am passing the museum each day on my way to work, and often think "I
have to go there one day" . But somehow there are always other things to do...
I hope that this winter I will get there...

[nasza_maggie]

Karola

I think you should film her stories ASAP.
In fact I know that the people in the museum are often interested in such or
any footage you may have of her stories, or things like photos which they scan
and put in archives

[ja_karola]

Thanks Maggie! I will most certainly film her as soon as I can. She has lots
of post-war pictures of Warsaw. Perhaps she'd like to donate them to the museum.

[nasza_maggie]

I know thay take care of such memorabilia. However there is no obligation to
give stuff to them. Scans are good too.

[gfunkallstars]

The museum is excellent and well worth a visit. One thing that really lets it
down though is the quality of the information in English. I've taken many
friends and family members from the UK there and all of them have commented on
this. Most of the time the mistranslations are mere distractions but sometimes
they are irritating and even upseting. I remember one in particular about a
(Polish version of the text)very courageous lady who had trained as a nurse and
used her medical training to save the lives of many fighters. The English
version was garbled and said that she "had finished nursery school" when she was
24. The whole text made her sound stupid. I spoke to one of the curators about
it and he said that he would make a note of it and add it to the list of
mistakes. He said the poor quality translations are very often commented on.
It's a real shame that in such an important museum the city authorities didn't
think of getting someone to proof read the info.