Trip to Jewish Cemetry in Warsaw

Today was a national holiday here in Polska so I took the opportunity to visit the Cmentarz Powązki in the afternoon. Prior to leaving I lined the stomach with a bowl of some accidentally very spicy Parsnip soup. Tactical error since this evening's meal is Jamaican Jerk chicken and rice an' pea. Tomorrow could be a testing experience for the tum-tum jakdlugotak the spice intake has suddenly gone through the roof. (Cheap excuse to use a new word).

 
I arrived at about two o'clock and spent about an hour wandering round this enormous cmetarz. Started in 1790 by a wealthy and influential Jew, the cemetry's oldest surviving grave dates from 1809 (Facts all pinched from The Warsaw Ghetto by Barbara Engelking, which I am reading at the moment and will review when I've finished the 800+ pages). There are graves of many prominent Jews and a number of monuments. Entrance seemed to be free, but I couldn't find anyone to pay in any case.

There was not a soul around me nor a bird in the tree and only the distant rushing noise of traffic from ul. Ostrowiecka to remind me that I was in the middle of a city at all.

The dedications to family members lost in the Holocaust were very moving. I spent a long time reflecting on the monument to Janusz Korszak, the famous author who ran the Ghetto Orphanage, but I couldn't take a photo of it to show here: taking photograps in cemetries always makes me feel uncomfortable. You're walking on bones and memories. It's not something that should be done lightly like some family trip to an attraction. But as you can see I overcame this unease.



Yiddish is a very beautiful language when written down and I really want to go back for a bit longer on another occasion.