I've Just Spent a Day and a Half in the Totally Reconstructed, Awesome City of Warsaw

I have just completed a fast (36 hours) but intensive stay in Warsaw, Poland, a large, dynamic and prosperous world capital that few Americans visit. With its 43 theaters with live productions, its 32 museums, and countless architectural highlights, it reminds us of the enormous cultural heritage and remarkable cultural life of Europe. But it is fully as fascinating for its evidence of the ability of human beings to overcome the worst ravages of monstrous brutality.

[image error] Photo Caption: Old Town, Warsaw.Kaushik Basu/Frommers.com Community

Some 10% of Warsaw was bombed and demolished in the earliest days of World War II. Another large part of this sprawling urban capital (its large Jewish ghetto created by the Nazy army, into which Warsaw's large population of Jews, some 340,000 person, were stuffed) was obliterated during the heroic but futile uprising of the Jewish Ghetto in 1943. And finally, a remaining part of the city was deliberately demolished -- systematically detonated and demolished by the Germans -- in the immediately aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising by local Polish forces in the last months of the war.

When the war ended in 1945, Warsaw was almost totally in ruins. And the Poles proceeded to rebuild. Over the next 50 years, they painfully reconstructed the entire city (and continue to build today; the city is dotted with cranes and construction sites, and one of the largest new buildings slated for completion in 2013 is a Museum of Jewish History and Culture).

As you wander through Warsaw, as I have over the past 36 hours, you pass every conceivable type of world architecture. You have areas as modern as in any prosperous U.S. city. You have other areas dotted with the sterile buildings and apartment houses of the Stalinist era of Soviet Russia (Poland was a Soviet-dominated country from 1945 to 1989). One building, the city's tallest, is a 40-story-high Palace of Science and Culture designed to woefully outdated Soviet specifications, where you can ascend to an observation area on the 30th floor (admission charge 20 zlotys, about $8) for a panoramic view of the city.

And most enticing, you can go to the rebuilt Old City (Stare Miasto) of Warsaw, the original city within its medieval walls, where every single building was carefully reconstructed to the exact original, ancient design. So successfully was this done that the enchanting area -- a huge market square surrounded by narrow streets of medieval and renaissance design -- has been named a UNESCO World Heritage Sight. It is full of European tourists, which it serves from dozens of sidewalk cafes and craft shops, a memorable excursion into the past, fully as fascinating as the Grand Place of Brussels or similar squares in Rome or Rothenburg-ob-der-Tauber.

Everywhere you look are monuments to the greats of Polish history: Frederic Chopin, whose several associated-buildings, statues and churches are fronted by stone benches containing a button that you press to hear a Chopin melody; Marie Curie, the first and only woman to receive two Nobel prizes in two different fields; Jan Paderewski; countless others. You pass Royal Palaces, a Castle, a Cathedral destroyed in the war and then also rebuilt to its original specifications; and too many re-constructed masterworks of architecture to be named. All this is in a large, sprawling city that would take several days to fully examine.

I was especially touched by the comments of several official guides, all in their 20s, who obviously had not personally experienced the German depredations of World War II or the difficult life under the Soviets in the post-war years. I was especially alert to the obvious effort they made to explain the especial horrors to which the giant Jewish population had been subjected before they were almost totally liquidated. "This is part of our history," they told me, "and cannot be passed over; we must emphasize these horrors and how they came about". They also drew my attention to several Jewish festivals that were scheduled for the remainder of this year.

I can't explain why so few American tourists go to Warsaw; it more than repays a visit. It tells you something about human beings. And it is the largest city on earth to be completely rebuilt after its almost complete destruction.

Tomorrow: Bialystok and Lomza, Poland. The whirlwind tour continues.