Walking Among Warsaw’s Memory &Monuments

From Day Four of our Charlotte Community Trip

Monuments and museums in conversation,
stone and story side by side.
The Ghetto Uprising’s Heroes and Martyrs Memorial
and the Polin Museum,
where a thousand years of life unfold
One shows how they died.
The other, how they lived.

At Nożyk Synagogue
blending modernity and tradition
built at the 20^th century’s cusp,
desecrated into Nazi stables
only one of four hundred shuls endure.

The Warsaw Jewish Cemetery
solemn and vast
with voices speaking through stone.
Telling of rich, humble, and hard history,
for its community
to know who they are
and from where they come.

Ringelblum’s archives —
testimony in scraps and secret.
Oneg Shabbat — the joy of Sabbath —
coded its name to safeguard its heroic work.
Buried beneath rubble,
miraculously unearthed.
A testimony to life & resolve
& of mass murder to someday seek justice.

Once, there was a golden age for Jews in Poland.
That time is gone.
But there is something here still —
For us to grow.
For us to know.