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| Museum of Science and Culture |
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| The museum is a venue for wedding pictures. |
T
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| View of our hotel from the top of the Museum |
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| Stadium that Ruthie helped design |
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| View of old town from atop the Museum |
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
November 8th - Second day in Warsaw: As mentioned the Polonia Palace is palatial and its breakfast is over the top. A wide variety of everything, including champagne and vodka. Where to begin? After a very healthy and filling breakfast we head out to the Museum of Science and Culture which is right across the street from the hotel. It's a beautiful day and we are able to get a beautiful view of the city.
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
November 9 - MINSK
We arrived in Minsk the evening of November 9th. Although the flight is only 55 minutes, there is a 2 hour time difference and it is already about 8:00 p.m. Vlad (Tamara's nephew) meets us at the airport. What a wonderful man. He and his friend drive us to the Hotel Belarus, probably an old soviet style hotel that has been remodeled. It is late and we opt for supper at the restaurant on the top floor of the hotel.
November 10, 2015 - Minsk
We have breakfast - another big buffet, but not as sumptuous as the Polonia. It does, however, have kasha. Minsk is quite a beautiful city - very European looking.
Vlad has arranged to have Alex give us a tour of Minsk. Oksana (Vlad's wife and Tamara's niece) drives us. Wow - she can put Mario Andretti to shame.
We head to the small old town. Most of the city of Minsk was destroyed during World War II so the old town is relatively small. In the town square, we can see the Town Hall, Near the Town Hall is a sculpture of horses and a cart, Cathedal of Saint Virgin Mary, a sculpture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with a lucky key (rubbing it is supposed to bring one luck). Off the square is a monument representing trade in Belarus.
We head towards Independence Square, with a wonderful fountain, (Fountain of Independence) and the obligatory statue of Lenin. Around the area are a number of monuments dedicated to architects and writers.
We go to the Church of Saints Simon and Helena, also known as the Red Church, which was opened in 1910. The bronze statue in front of the church represents Archangel Michael slaying the Devil, represented as a dragon. There is also the Nagasaki Bell, a replica of the one that used to hang in Nagasaki’s Urakami Cathedral before it was destroyed in the nuclear attack on August 9, 1945. The bell rings simultaneously in Nagasaki and Minsk.
We visit the old Jewish ghetto in Minsk. .Before World War II, Jews were third among the ethnic groups in Belarus and comprised more than 40% of the population in cities and towns. The population of cities such as Minsk, Pinsk, Mahiliou, Babrujsk, Viciebsk, and Homiel was more than 50% Jewish. In 1897 there were 724,548 Jews in Belarus, i.e. 13.6% of the total population. Yiddish was one of the four official languages of Belarus. More than 800,000 Jews—90% of the Jewish population—were killed in Belarus during the Holocaust. It is hard to say what the Jewish population of Minsk is today; it is estimated to be about 20,000 to 40,000.
The ghetto was established in 1941, and had over 80,000 inhabitants. In the fall of 1943 the ghetto was destroyed and the remaining Jews were sent to the death camps.
One of the brick buildings in the ghetto was a former bakery. It is difficult to get a feel for the ghetto itself as many of the buildings were destroyed and have been rebuilt.
We go to a memorial to the massacre that is in a park. There are some plaques a well as tombstones from the cemetery. In addition there is a memorial that has a broken table and broken chairs with the inscriptions in Yiddish, Russian and German.
The monument is very moving. We next go to what is one of the most moving and famous memorials to the Holocaust, the "Pit" a monument devoted to the victims of the Holocaust in Minsk, Belarus. It is on the site where, on March 2, 1942, the Nazi forces shot about 5000 prisoners of the nearby Minsk Ghetto.
The obelisk was created in 1947 and in 2000 a bronze sculpture entitled "The Last Way" was added. It represents a group of doomed martyrs, walking down the steps of the pit. On the obelisk is written in Russian and Yiddish "The bright memory of five times the light of thousands of Jews who perished at the hands of sworn enemies of humanity - German-fascist monsters"
Every year on March 2 memorial rallies occur.
Alex drops us off for lunch in the City Center. We eat at "Vasilki" restaurant for some good mushroom soup and pancakes (aka blintzes) with chicken and mushrooms. Across the street from the restaurant is the KGB building. Ken snaps a picture of that, surreptitiously of course.
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| View of Minsk from our hotel room |
November 10, 2015 - Minsk
We have breakfast - another big buffet, but not as sumptuous as the Polonia. It does, however, have kasha. Minsk is quite a beautiful city - very European looking.
Vlad has arranged to have Alex give us a tour of Minsk. Oksana (Vlad's wife and Tamara's niece) drives us. Wow - she can put Mario Andretti to shame.
We head to the small old town. Most of the city of Minsk was destroyed during World War II so the old town is relatively small. In the town square, we can see the Town Hall, Near the Town Hall is a sculpture of horses and a cart, Cathedal of Saint Virgin Mary, a sculpture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with a lucky key (rubbing it is supposed to bring one luck). Off the square is a monument representing trade in Belarus.
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| Check out this bike rack. Minsk has dedicated bike lanes and bicycling facilities, including a 40 Km bike path along the river running through Minsk. |
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| Monument to Trade |
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| Ken and Oksanya rubbing the lucky key |
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| Town Hall |
We head towards Independence Square, with a wonderful fountain, (Fountain of Independence) and the obligatory statue of Lenin. Around the area are a number of monuments dedicated to architects and writers.
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| Ken and Alex in Independence Square |
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Victory Square |
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| Statue of Lenin at Independence Square |
We go to the Church of Saints Simon and Helena, also known as the Red Church, which was opened in 1910. The bronze statue in front of the church represents Archangel Michael slaying the Devil, represented as a dragon. There is also the Nagasaki Bell, a replica of the one that used to hang in Nagasaki’s Urakami Cathedral before it was destroyed in the nuclear attack on August 9, 1945. The bell rings simultaneously in Nagasaki and Minsk.
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| "Red Church" |
We visit the old Jewish ghetto in Minsk. .Before World War II, Jews were third among the ethnic groups in Belarus and comprised more than 40% of the population in cities and towns. The population of cities such as Minsk, Pinsk, Mahiliou, Babrujsk, Viciebsk, and Homiel was more than 50% Jewish. In 1897 there were 724,548 Jews in Belarus, i.e. 13.6% of the total population. Yiddish was one of the four official languages of Belarus. More than 800,000 Jews—90% of the Jewish population—were killed in Belarus during the Holocaust. It is hard to say what the Jewish population of Minsk is today; it is estimated to be about 20,000 to 40,000.
The ghetto was established in 1941, and had over 80,000 inhabitants. In the fall of 1943 the ghetto was destroyed and the remaining Jews were sent to the death camps.
One of the brick buildings in the ghetto was a former bakery. It is difficult to get a feel for the ghetto itself as many of the buildings were destroyed and have been rebuilt.
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| Brick building in the ghetto. |
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| Tombstones from the cemetery |
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| Monument to the victims of the Holocaust |
The obelisk was created in 1947 and in 2000 a bronze sculpture entitled "The Last Way" was added. It represents a group of doomed martyrs, walking down the steps of the pit. On the obelisk is written in Russian and Yiddish "The bright memory of five times the light of thousands of Jews who perished at the hands of sworn enemies of humanity - German-fascist monsters"
Every year on March 2 memorial rallies occur.
 |
After seeing the "Pit," Alex takes us to a small synagogue in Minsk. It is unclear the population of Jews in the City and the size of the synagogue indicates that the number of practicing Jews is quite small. The synagogue offers three meals a day to whoever comes in (usually elderly Jews) and offers other services to those in the City. |
Alex drops us off for lunch in the City Center. We eat at "Vasilki" restaurant for some good mushroom soup and pancakes (aka blintzes) with chicken and mushrooms. Across the street from the restaurant is the KGB building. Ken snaps a picture of that, surreptitiously of course.
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| KGB Building |
We now have to get back to the hotel. It is raining and we have a difficult time figuring out how to take the metro or catch a taxi. We end up walking back to the hotel. We go to dinner with Oksana and Vlad to Restaurant Druzya. A mere 1,222,000 Belarussian rubles. Yes that is over one million which when converted to US dollars is about $70. Food is plentiful and cheap in Belarus.
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| Oksana and Vlad. So much food! |
Monday, November 9, 2015
Arrival in Katowice, November 6, 2015
Ken accepted an offer to teach American Civil Procedure at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland the third weekend in November. As we had not been to Poland, we decided to tour a bit of the country. Then Ken looked at the map and saw how close we were to Belarus. "Don't you want to see the home of your ancestors?" he asked. My first response was "No." They hated us, and killed us so why would I want to go to a place where we were not wanted. However, after thinking about it and talking to some relatives I decided that it was "now or never" if I was ever to go to the home of my maternal grandparents.
I started to gather information. I am not into geneology, but I knew I needed some more information. My sister, Robin, is the "keeper of family history" and she connected me with our cousin, Alan Benner, Uncle Sam Benner's son. Sam Benner was grandma's younger brother and told Alan about life in Motele before he left for the United States before 1920. Alan wrote it down and sent a copy to me. From that information I was able to find the general area where the Benner house in Motele was at the time. Alan also sent me a somewhat involved family tree that had been created by another cousin. My uncle Lenny also had written a family history. Leonard had actually visited Yanoveh and Motele in 1937 when he and his mother (my grandmother) went to Europe to visit relatives . The trip was clearly a heroic act on the part of my grandmother given the rise of Nazism and the groundswell of support for Hitler at the time.
Ken and I also talked to Larry Tarkinow, my mother's first cousin. Larry had been living in Yanoveh and Motele at the time of the war. It seems people went back and forth between the two places, both shtetls with a large Jewish population. Around 1942 the Nazis came to Yanoveh and Motele and rounded up the men, had them dig a pit, and then shot them. The Nazis came back to Motele, rounded up the women and children and marched them to their death. During the march, a woman created a commotion by raising her skirt and told Larry to run to the corn fields. He did - he was small and could get lost in the fields. Later, Larry and some others (including our cousin in Israel, Sam Garber) met up in the forest, built a room underground where they and about 10 others lived for about 18 months. During that period of time, partisan groups and others were hiding out in the heavily forested area. The area was quite swampy and the Nazis were reluctant to search the area, not to mention their fear of the partisans. Larry's story, as well as Uncle Sam's story, are not only interesting but are a testament to survival against all odds.
Travel arrangements for Belarus are not easy. We have a friend from Belarus who left in the 80s and the woman who cleans our house is from Belarus. They offered some advise including the necessity of getting a driver to go to the shtetls. Ancestry tourism appears to have taken off in Belarus and there are a number of people who are willing to take you on an ancestry trip for a not insignificant sum of money. On recommendation of my brother in law, Bernie, who had been to Belarus to find his ancestors, we opted for the Jewish Heritage Research Group (JHRG), which according to its website is devoted to preserving Jewish heritage of Belarus. One other reason for going with this organization was that it had a United States telephone number.
Of course, finding a tour guide was really the least of the problems. Belarus is a former soviet republic and probably the republic which has retained the greatest vestiges of the soviet regime. So, a visa is required to go there. And you must have specific travel insurance, a letter of introduction, and a place to stay. And all lines must be filled in on the visa form. I made several calls to the Belarus embassy in Washington, D.C., just to make sure I was crossing the t's and dotting the i's.
Yuri from JHRG sent out the appropriate introductory letter, we got the specific medical insurance, and with fear and trepidation we sent the form, money order, and our passports to the Belarussian embassy to get the visa. We had heard horror stories about delays in getting a visa, and we only had a month to get them. But, thankfully, our passports along with the visas came back with plenty of time to spare.
We started our trip with a flight to Katowice, Poland, to get settled for the teaching gig. We had some time to walk around Katowice, and found a dive Vietnamese restaurant at which to eat. Check out the bike facilities in Katowice, including a bike cafe.
November 7, 2015 - WARSAW
The next day (November 7) we took the train to Warsaw to spend a few days. Our hotel, the Polonia Palace, was a few blocks from the train station and was simply palacial. After we got settled in, we walked to the Old Town, which was maybe 1 Km from the hotel.
There is lots to see in the Old Town, including the Statue of Copernicus, University of Warsaw (UW), Presidential Palace (with guards), Old Town Square, St. Anne's Church, and the Barbican (wall around the old city).
Warsaw is a beautiful city, and bicycle and pedestrian friendly, with bike lanes. pedestrian malls, and bicycle stations every few blocks.
We continued our exploration of Warsaw after walking through the Old Town and ended up in New Town. We found a soft serve place. The first time ever that Judy hrew soft serve away -it tasted like air.
November 8th - Second day in Warsaw: As mentioned the Polonia Palace is palatial and its breakfast is over the top, with a wide variety of everything, including champagne and vodka. Where to begin? After a very healthy and filling breakfast we head out to the Museum of Science and Culture which is right across the street from the hotel. It's a beautiful day and we are able to get a beautiful view of the city.
In the afternoon, we join a Free Walking Tour of Jewish Warsaw with Pse. I ask Pse if he is Jewish; he says no one has ever asked him that, and that he is not. But he is extremely knowledgeable and has clearly studied the horrors of the Nazi occupation in Warsaw. .Before World War II, the Jewish community in Warsaw stood at about 350,000. That was almost one-third of the city's population and the second-largest Jewish community outside of New York. Toward the end of 1940, the Nazis herded the city's entire Jewish population, as well as around 100,000 Jews from elsewhere in Poland, into a small ghetto area west of the Old Town. The first deportations and mass killings began at the end of 1941. In the 1943 Ghetto Uprising, the Jews heroically rose up against their oppressors. The uprising was quickly put down, and what remained of the ghetto was liquidated.
We walk around the area that was once the ghetto.
We go to Umschlagplatz,the square where starting 22 July 1942 transports of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto left for the extermination camp at Treblinka. Everyday 5,000 to 7,000 people were sent to their deaths. A monument was built here in 1988. As the inscription on the monument informs us: 'Over 300,000 Jews followed this path of suffering and death between 1940-1943 from the Ghetto created in Warsaw to the Nazi death camps'. Four hundred and forty-eight first names, from Abel to Żanna, were engraved in the wall as a symbol of the 450 000 Jews imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto
We walked to the Mila 18 memorial where Jewish resistance fighters died fighting Nazis. A number of resistance fighters in the bunker committed mass suicide rather than surrender.
We walk to the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, which is across from the modern museum of the history of the Polish Jews. Outside of the Museum is a statue of Willy Brandt, former Chancellor of Germany, who in 1970 knelt in pensive apology in front of Warsaw’s Monument to the Ghetto Heroes. After the walking tour we attempt to go to the Jewish cemetery, which unfortunately is closed.
It's been a full day, so we head back to the hotel and then dinner at the Radio City Cafe, which is in the former Radio Free Europe building. Lots of pictures on the wall of that era.
November 9 - Third day in Warsaw
We have only a few hours before we need to leave for Minsk so we head out to the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising (which was in 1944). The museum is overwhelming, with so much information about the occupation of the Nazis from 1939 to 1944, the atrocities, the cruelty, and the resistance movement which was crushed by the Nazis. It is impossible to see everything in the 2 hours we had.
It is pouring when we leave and with some difficulty and the kindness of strangers we make it back to the hotel via the Metro. We use the hotel's driver (the only person of color that we have seen in Warsaw-- he is from Ghana). At the airport we meet some people from Waukesha (the Aaron Rogers jersey gave him away). We are on Lot Airlines and on our way to Belarus.
Ken accepted an offer to teach American Civil Procedure at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland the third weekend in November. As we had not been to Poland, we decided to tour a bit of the country. Then Ken looked at the map and saw how close we were to Belarus. "Don't you want to see the home of your ancestors?" he asked. My first response was "No." They hated us, and killed us so why would I want to go to a place where we were not wanted. However, after thinking about it and talking to some relatives I decided that it was "now or never" if I was ever to go to the home of my maternal grandparents.
I started to gather information. I am not into geneology, but I knew I needed some more information. My sister, Robin, is the "keeper of family history" and she connected me with our cousin, Alan Benner, Uncle Sam Benner's son. Sam Benner was grandma's younger brother and told Alan about life in Motele before he left for the United States before 1920. Alan wrote it down and sent a copy to me. From that information I was able to find the general area where the Benner house in Motele was at the time. Alan also sent me a somewhat involved family tree that had been created by another cousin. My uncle Lenny also had written a family history. Leonard had actually visited Yanoveh and Motele in 1937 when he and his mother (my grandmother) went to Europe to visit relatives . The trip was clearly a heroic act on the part of my grandmother given the rise of Nazism and the groundswell of support for Hitler at the time.
Ken and I also talked to Larry Tarkinow, my mother's first cousin. Larry had been living in Yanoveh and Motele at the time of the war. It seems people went back and forth between the two places, both shtetls with a large Jewish population. Around 1942 the Nazis came to Yanoveh and Motele and rounded up the men, had them dig a pit, and then shot them. The Nazis came back to Motele, rounded up the women and children and marched them to their death. During the march, a woman created a commotion by raising her skirt and told Larry to run to the corn fields. He did - he was small and could get lost in the fields. Later, Larry and some others (including our cousin in Israel, Sam Garber) met up in the forest, built a room underground where they and about 10 others lived for about 18 months. During that period of time, partisan groups and others were hiding out in the heavily forested area. The area was quite swampy and the Nazis were reluctant to search the area, not to mention their fear of the partisans. Larry's story, as well as Uncle Sam's story, are not only interesting but are a testament to survival against all odds.
Travel arrangements for Belarus are not easy. We have a friend from Belarus who left in the 80s and the woman who cleans our house is from Belarus. They offered some advise including the necessity of getting a driver to go to the shtetls. Ancestry tourism appears to have taken off in Belarus and there are a number of people who are willing to take you on an ancestry trip for a not insignificant sum of money. On recommendation of my brother in law, Bernie, who had been to Belarus to find his ancestors, we opted for the Jewish Heritage Research Group (JHRG), which according to its website is devoted to preserving Jewish heritage of Belarus. One other reason for going with this organization was that it had a United States telephone number.
Of course, finding a tour guide was really the least of the problems. Belarus is a former soviet republic and probably the republic which has retained the greatest vestiges of the soviet regime. So, a visa is required to go there. And you must have specific travel insurance, a letter of introduction, and a place to stay. And all lines must be filled in on the visa form. I made several calls to the Belarus embassy in Washington, D.C., just to make sure I was crossing the t's and dotting the i's.
Yuri from JHRG sent out the appropriate introductory letter, we got the specific medical insurance, and with fear and trepidation we sent the form, money order, and our passports to the Belarussian embassy to get the visa. We had heard horror stories about delays in getting a visa, and we only had a month to get them. But, thankfully, our passports along with the visas came back with plenty of time to spare.
We started our trip with a flight to Katowice, Poland, to get settled for the teaching gig. We had some time to walk around Katowice, and found a dive Vietnamese restaurant at which to eat. Check out the bike facilities in Katowice, including a bike cafe.
November 7, 2015 - WARSAW
The next day (November 7) we took the train to Warsaw to spend a few days. Our hotel, the Polonia Palace, was a few blocks from the train station and was simply palacial. After we got settled in, we walked to the Old Town, which was maybe 1 Km from the hotel.
There is lots to see in the Old Town, including the Statue of Copernicus, University of Warsaw (UW), Presidential Palace (with guards), Old Town Square, St. Anne's Church, and the Barbican (wall around the old city).
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| The Barbican with Castle in background |
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| Ken and Frederick Chopin |
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| University of Warsaw |
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| Presidential palace |
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| View of St. Anne's from Castle |
Warsaw is a beautiful city, and bicycle and pedestrian friendly, with bike lanes. pedestrian malls, and bicycle stations every few blocks.
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| bicycle lane |
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| Bicycle lane |
Not really knowing where we were going we ended up at the monument to the Warsaw Uprising. A very impressive and moving monument. The pictures below do not do it justice.
We continued our walk, getting lost along the way, but found ourselves in front of the monument to Monte Cassino, a WWII battle in Italy. Crossing the road in Warsaw is a major undertaking. Usually you have to go underground and then figure out which exit to take. If you go out the wrong side, you have to retrace and find the right exit. Finally we work our way to the hotel, and stop to have dinner at a nice restaurant, We reward ourselves with wine at the hotel.
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| Monument to the Warsaw Uprising |
We continued our walk, getting lost along the way, but found ourselves in front of the monument to Monte Cassino, a WWII battle in Italy. Crossing the road in Warsaw is a major undertaking. Usually you have to go underground and then figure out which exit to take. If you go out the wrong side, you have to retrace and find the right exit. Finally we work our way to the hotel, and stop to have dinner at a nice restaurant, We reward ourselves with wine at the hotel.
November 8th - Second day in Warsaw: As mentioned the Polonia Palace is palatial and its breakfast is over the top, with a wide variety of everything, including champagne and vodka. Where to begin? After a very healthy and filling breakfast we head out to the Museum of Science and Culture which is right across the street from the hotel. It's a beautiful day and we are able to get a beautiful view of the city.
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| Museum of Science and Culture |
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| The museum is a venue for wedding pictures. |
T
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| View of our hotel from the top of the Museum |
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| Stadium that Ruthie helped design |
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| View of old town from atop the Museum |
In the afternoon, we join a Free Walking Tour of Jewish Warsaw with Pse. I ask Pse if he is Jewish; he says no one has ever asked him that, and that he is not. But he is extremely knowledgeable and has clearly studied the horrors of the Nazi occupation in Warsaw. .Before World War II, the Jewish community in Warsaw stood at about 350,000. That was almost one-third of the city's population and the second-largest Jewish community outside of New York. Toward the end of 1940, the Nazis herded the city's entire Jewish population, as well as around 100,000 Jews from elsewhere in Poland, into a small ghetto area west of the Old Town. The first deportations and mass killings began at the end of 1941. In the 1943 Ghetto Uprising, the Jews heroically rose up against their oppressors. The uprising was quickly put down, and what remained of the ghetto was liquidated.
We walk around the area that was once the ghetto.
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| Monument to the ghetto showing the area of the ghetto |
We go to Umschlagplatz,the square where starting 22 July 1942 transports of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto left for the extermination camp at Treblinka. Everyday 5,000 to 7,000 people were sent to their deaths. A monument was built here in 1988. As the inscription on the monument informs us: 'Over 300,000 Jews followed this path of suffering and death between 1940-1943 from the Ghetto created in Warsaw to the Nazi death camps'. Four hundred and forty-eight first names, from Abel to Żanna, were engraved in the wall as a symbol of the 450 000 Jews imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto
We walked to the Mila 18 memorial where Jewish resistance fighters died fighting Nazis. A number of resistance fighters in the bunker committed mass suicide rather than surrender.
 |
Monument to the Ghetto Heroes |
We walk to the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, which is across from the modern museum of the history of the Polish Jews. Outside of the Museum is a statue of Willy Brandt, former Chancellor of Germany, who in 1970 knelt in pensive apology in front of Warsaw’s Monument to the Ghetto Heroes. After the walking tour we attempt to go to the Jewish cemetery, which unfortunately is closed.
It's been a full day, so we head back to the hotel and then dinner at the Radio City Cafe, which is in the former Radio Free Europe building. Lots of pictures on the wall of that era.
November 9 - Third day in Warsaw
We have only a few hours before we need to leave for Minsk so we head out to the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising (which was in 1944). The museum is overwhelming, with so much information about the occupation of the Nazis from 1939 to 1944, the atrocities, the cruelty, and the resistance movement which was crushed by the Nazis. It is impossible to see everything in the 2 hours we had.
It is pouring when we leave and with some difficulty and the kindness of strangers we make it back to the hotel via the Metro. We use the hotel's driver (the only person of color that we have seen in Warsaw-- he is from Ghana). At the airport we meet some people from Waukesha (the Aaron Rogers jersey gave him away). We are on Lot Airlines and on our way to Belarus.
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