 This marker showing the place of the wall separating the Warsaw Ghetto from the rest of the city, is located on a sidewalk along the side wall of the Conventual Franciscan Church of St. Francis of Assisi, Warsaw, Poland. It is said that the friars smuggled food and goods into the Ghetto from inside the church. |
My visits to both the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, and to the site of the Warsaw Ghetto, have had a profound effect on my thinking about those places and the horrors that occurred there. I will no doubt be reflecting on my thoughts from those places for a very long time to come.
During
my visit to Warszava (Warsaw), Poland, I was able to go to the place
where once was located the "Warsaw Ghetto", a place where nearly a half a
million Jewish people were fenced in and imprisoned in their own city
from 1940 until 1943. The living conditions in the ghetto were
absolutely deplorable, and many thousands of innocent people died there
from starvation, disease and violence. It's almost impossible to imagine
how this could have happened in a "civilized" world. When the Nazis
decided to clear out the ghetto and transport its remaining inhabitants
to concentration camps, and to the fate of ultimate extermination in the
gas chambers, many resisted. As the German soldiers went door to door
rounding up the people, some cried out and begged to be left alone; they
refused to be "voluntarily" taken from their homes and away from their
families and loved ones. Many of those who resisted were "shot dead on
the spot."
Real people; people who loved and cared
for others; people who had dreams of better lives; people who wanted the
best for their children; real people who were simply "shot dead on the
spot."
The history of that place, and the horrible reality of what happened there, should never be forgotten.
My visit there has had a profound effect on me.
Like
those who were so inhumanely treated in the Warsaw Ghetto, what human
beings among us today might be considered to be so worthless and without
rights that others who simply have "power" would have the right to
"shoot them dead on the spot?"
These were my thoughts as I now contemplate my visit to the site of the Warsaw ghetto.
Friar Timothy
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