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Warsaw, of course, is not without parks. In this fall the Lazienki Park, its largest with 76 hectares at the center of the city, was glorious in the yellow leaves of its maple trees.
This city that was rebuilt after World War II in the “socialist fashion,” with a reputation as “a gloomy concrete city,” now looked different only due the addition of a hodgepodge of high-rises.
“It has the best view of the city because that is the only place where you could not see the Palace itself.” I went up to its observation deck on the 30th floor, and shared the views of Warsaw from many sides with a group of young Polish visitors.
Stalin ordered it constructed in the early 1950s as a “gift from the nations of Soviet Union (sic)”.
Among the structures the Nazis blew up in the Ghetto none was as sacred to the Jews as the 19th century Great Synagogue, the largest in Warsaw. “Its last rabbi cursed that nothing should be built on the site afterward,” as my tour guide related the urban legend in Warsaw. In the 1980s, however, a structure, commonly referred to as the Blue Skyscraper was erected here, after agreeing to establish inside it a memorial to the Synagogue. Notable as this 28 story building might be, with a facade that reflects the blue of the sky on a clear day, it is not the dominant building in Warsaw.
In the middle of the block, however, preservation of precious past memory has given way to the need for living now. TV satellite dishes and curtains have been installed by current occupants of the upper floors, and stores below were open for business.
The signs for a few were still hanging on the doors of these shut shops. A net above them now protect the passersby from the falling debris of the abandoned residential floors above.
The hotel concierge later told me that the occupants of those apartments and the owners of those stores were not necessarily Jewish. The Nozyk Synagogue two blocks away, however, had been repaired and repainted.
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