Warsaw

Sunday, September 23
We headed across the river to Praga this morning, specifically to a branch of the Museum of Warsaw dedicated to the history of Praga.  Vicki has a particular interest in this Right Bank district of the city because her mother’s paternal ancestors (the Lubanskis) had lived there.  Vicki had arranged for an English-speaking guide (yet another Anna!) to help us navigate the collection.  Based on information Vicki had emailed in advance of our visit, Anna had dug through historical records and found information specific to the areas where the family had lived.  Likewise, Vicki’s extensive research was of great interest to Anna and piqued her interest in following certain investigative threads.

Praga was originally a separate entity from Warsaw, with a diverse population that included many Jewish residents, as well as homes of the nobility and land owned by the church.  Historically, it was treated as a poor second cousin of the Warsaw of the Left Bank, though it, too, had access to the busy trade and economic driver that its riverfront location afforded.  Anna used the museum’s exhibits to walk us through Praga’s story of occupation, devastation, industrialization, destruction, good times and bad and our hours with her passed quickly.  

After doing our best to decipher the museum café’s Polish menu, we had lunch and checked out a couple of other places in Praga for Vicki.  We pinpointed the address were one of the Lubanski homes had been and then walked around the grounds of the Loreto Chapel, on the grounds of a monastery church where Vicki has found many of the family baptismal and marriage records.  Dating from the early 17^th century, it is Praga’s oldest monument; though the church and chapel  have suffered damage over the course of  Warsaw’s many conflicts, it has been restored and remains an important part of Praga’s religious and cultural heritage.

Vicki and John were ready to call it a day by mid-afternoon, so we dropped them at their respective digs before parking our car at our own apartment and walking over to Warsaw’s Old Town.  85% of the city was destroyed during World War II, and there are historical photos illustrating the destruction and plaques commemorating events of that era placed in many locations around town.  Though it’s a reconstruction, the Old Town Market Square is a lovely space.  Its central Mermaid statue, a symbol of the city, is surrounded by restaurants, shops, outdoor cafes, which were full of people enjoying this Sunday afternoon.

We stopped in the Cathedral just off the market square and lingered in the large and busy Castle Square, where the (rebuilt) Castle and Church of St. Anne (a war survivor) face another symbol of the city, the soaring (but not original) King Zygmunt Column.  

A short walk from Castle Square, we found an interesting exhibit in a square named in honor of Herbert Hoover.  “From Poland with Love” documents the gratitude of the Polish people for help they received from the United States during the early 20^th century.  In his Fourteen Points formulated to ensure peace after World War I, Woodrow Wilson supported Poland’s independence in 1918 after more than a century of partition by its neighboring German, Austrian and Russian Empires.  Between 1918 and 1922, Herbert Hoover headed the American Relief Association, which supplied food and humanitarian aid to Poland and elsewhere after the war.  When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Hoover began the Commission for Polish Relief to assist the Polish people.  In 1926, the Poles undertook an extraordinary expression of gratitude for American help and support.  To mark the 150^th anniversary of American independence, 5.5 million Poles, 20% of the population, signed the Polish Declarations of Admiration and Friendship for the United States, an 11-volume collection of greetings and signatures expressing their gratitude.  The Declarations were presented to President Calvin Coolidge and transferred to the Library of Congress; they have now been digitized and available on the Library’s website.

Having acquired a special patriotic glow, we headed back to our apartment with smiles on our faces – a fine way to end this day.