In Warsaw To See The Memorial To The Warsaw Ghetto Aug 7

I am now in Warsaw, a special trip I made simply for myself to see the tribute to the Warsaw Jewish ghetto here. Here was the home of thousands of Jews out of whom 265,000 died at Treblinka concentration camp. I have made it a practice to never forget this extreme act of human atrocity and try to visit the key sites I am able to get to.

I am now in Warsaw, a special trip I made simply for myself to see the tribute to the Warsaw Jewish ghetto here. Here was the home of thousands of Jews out of whom 265,000 died at Treblinka concentration camp. I have made it a practice to never forget this extreme act of human atrocity and try to visit the key sites I am able to get to. (Dachau and Auschwitz have been visited, along with a few other sites. Each is somewhat different) There is nothing left of the ghetto itself as it was leveled by order of Adolf Hitler in 1943-44. Only a Christian church in the area was left standing in the area of several square blocks. This area became a closed camp with no exit. Death and disease reigned. Those who survived went to the concentration camp. One memorial was made famous by Willy Brant of Germany who knelt before the memorial in the 70’s as a symbolic act of national German repentance. The other is a simple memorial to the locale where Jews were loaded unto cattle cars for the train ride to the camp.

The story was depicted in the movie The Pianist recently. A full Holocaust Museum is scheduled to open here in 2009.

Like Darfur today, this is a reminder of how cruel humanity can be to others made in God’s image. It is a vivid, sad and tragic testimony to sin that resides in us as humans. Today with the threat of anti-Semitism again rising in Europe, to remember is important. The cry never again should apply not only to the Jewish people but to the systematic attempt to eliminate any people group. So pause for a moment of silence to remember—- and to never, ever forget.