Europe Trip 2025 - Warsaw - Things to Do - Part 1

Night at The Institute of Aviation 

A once in a year event. Hands-on experiences, like controlling a wheeled robot, a chance to see some planes from up close, a chance to meet interesting people, like the second Polish astronaut. Free entrance. Lots of people. Cold October night.

Kolejkowo

A chain of private model city/model train exhibitions. Each one is different - it showcases the local city/region. There is day/night change and some weather. Hands-on experiences: there are buttons that control some scenes. Paid entrance. Interesting, also for adults. 

The Royal Castle is rotated 90 degrees.

Grodzisk Mazowiecki train station.

"Tęsknię za tobą Żydzie" means "I miss you, Jew".

Push the button to run the ski lift.

Warsaw Rising Museum 

The museum of the August 1944 uprising. There were two uprisings in Warsaw in WW2. The first one was in 1943 and it is documented in Polin - Museum of the History of Polish Jews. The uprising museum home is not purpose built, but is a former tram power station, and therefore is quite confusing inside. There are plans to expand it, so hopefully it will get easier to navigate.

The person who posed for the Warsaw Marmaid monument - Krystyna Krahelska took part in the uprising as a field nurse and was killed.

The uprising was started to take Warsaw before the Soviets. With hindsight, a terrible mistake that cost about 170,000 Polish lives mostly through acts of despicable cruelty. The 19-25 August uprising in Paris, happening at the same time, in similar circumstances (allies advancing, Germans retreating), succeeded. Stalin stopped the advance towards Warsaw after reaching the outskirts of the city on August the 2nd, and started an offensive in Romania on August the 20th, entering Bucharest on 31st of August. The uprising in Warsaw lasted from 1st of August to 2nd of October. Afterwards, Germans started to systematically destroy Warsaw. When the Red Army entered the left-bank of the city on 17th of January 1945, among ruins lived only a few thousand people. Overall, from the 1.3 million people who lived in Warsaw in September 1939, about half were killed.

The "W" hour.

A replica of a Liberator plane. Such planes were dropping supplies for the uprising.

A map of the area controlled by the insurgents. Stalin did not allow western planes to land.

Whenever you read about wars, remember that "The first casualty of war is the truth". German Nazi propaganda was extraordinary from the start: painting Hitler as a man of peace, blaming Poland for attacking Germany, setting the occupied people against one another. Deceiving Jews with promises of resettlement in the east, so they would get on the trains without fighting, promising freedom through work ("Arbeit Macht Frei") at the entrance to a concentration camp, and ultimately disguising the gas chambers as showers. This time I noticed a couple of German posters written in Polish only, aimed at convincing Poles to volunteer for work in Germany, and showing a German soldier as a defender of Poles:

Top: "We are going to Germany". Bottom: "Polish women and girls on the way to work in Germany. Their joyful wait won't be disappointed" - yes, it sounds broken in Polish too.

"He defends You and your possessions!"

And at the same time if anyone attacked Germans, they would use the principle of group responsibility and shoot anywhere from 10 to 40? Poles for each German killed:

An announcement that 140 Poles, members of PZP (Polski Związek Powstańczy, another name of Home Army) and PPR (Polska Partia Robotnicza - Polish Workers Party) who were supposed to be freed, are instead going to be publicly executed, because of the 12 "dishonourable and insidious" attacks on Germans and their collaborators between 1 and 11 of March 1944 in which 4 Germans were killed, 9 injured and robbed, and 2 Poles working for Germans were injured and robbed.

Meanwhile, the Polish underground showed Germans as apes, black claws/death, and Polish women who went out with German soldiers as pigs:

Big German ape painting the V for victory. I remember the photographs with a big V standing next to the Warsaw Main train station.

A skull in German helmet taking the industrial output, the bags of flour and sugar, the Catholic cross, and leaving people hanging.

This rhymes in Polish: "In the streets of Warsaw, krauts walk with pigs!!!"

Two more interesting artefacts:

The highlighted section of the underground newspaper "Biuletyn informacyjny" from 17 August 1944 says "Under the pressure of bigger German and Ukrainian infantry units, supported by tanks [...]". There is a whole Wikipedia article about participation of Ukrainians.

This is a pamphlet in Polish by General Berling - the commander of the Polish Army in Russia (the second one, the first one by General Anders was not communist, and evacuated to Iran and later to Palestine). It is interesting for two reasons: it says the Home Army is paid by Germans ("hitlerites") - if anyone had any doubts how Stalin would treat the uprising by the Home Army, it adds "Death to fascists!" immediately after that, and second, it uses the word "Russia", not "Soviet Union". The "Biuletyn informacyjny" does the same in the subtitle in the lower right corner: "Military cooperation with Russians". This matches how my grandfather spoke about the war: there were Russians and Germans, not Soviets and Nazis. I never heard "Nazis" used in Polish. The word exists - "naziści", but communists used "hitlerites", or "fascists", and regular people, like my grandfather just said "Germans". Nothing in life is simple: Berling's daughter was serving in the Home Army during the uprising as a nurse.

Europe Trip 2025 - Warsaw - Polish History Museum

This museum is new. It's not even finished yet, but it's open, hosts temporary exhibitions, has a cafeteria, cloakroom and restrooms. It is located next to the new home of the Polish Army Museum, in the historic Warsaw Citadel in the Żoliborz district. 

Army on the left, history on the right.

When I visited, it had two exhibitions. A small one in the entrance hall juxta-positioning the Netflix 1670 crude TV comedy series with historical commentary, and a big one about the Kościuszko Uprising. Both were well prepared - I learned a lot and I hope they will come back when the museum is fully open.

The entrance hall

The Kościuszko Uprising (or insurrection) exhibition was very detailed: the background, politics, campaign, forces, weapons, etc. Kościuszko himself apart from leading the 1794 uprising, took part in the earlier defensive war with Russia in 1792, and in the American Revolutionary War 1776-1783. He is a national hero of Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, and the US, and a honorary citizen of France. He was against slavery and discrimination.

One interesting thing that occurred to me was that Kościuszko was probably gay. While studying in Paris, he painted nude males from all angles and they look sexy, while the only nude female painting shown in the museum...well, see for yourself below. He never married. He travelled from America to Europe with his aide-de-camp and friend, Jean Lappiere (who was quite a looker), who accompanied him during the uprising and two years of imprisonment in Russia.

Portrait by Jan Józef Sikorski - not sure how accurate it is as it was painted in 1840.

The males he painted:

...versus a female:

He also painted an "Ideal Plan of Park and Garden Layout" for Czartorysk. The "Bel-Air" settlement caught my attention:

 

Portraits of Kościuszko himself, from little boy to an old man:

The physiognotrace of the 47 year old Kościuszko:

A portrait by Ramsay Richard Reinagle, at the age of 71, painted in 1817 - the year Kosciuszko died. His health deteriorated after a fall from a horse into a cold stream and subsequent pneumonia.

Drawn by Xavier Zeltner two months before Kościuszko's death in Switzerland.

 Another interesting/unexpected thing was the use of barrier troops:

Salute cannon

While we are talking about cannons, I learned the difference between a shell, round shot, and grapeshot:

For military enthusiasts, more cannons, (and tanks, and troops carriers...), can be seen outdoors:

The Kościuszko uprising was something new. It was influenced by the ideals of the French Revolution, but it did not resort to terror. Only 50 death sentences were carried out, while in France it was about 17,000. It was the first time that different classes of Polish society volunteered to help with the war effort: peasants, city dwellers, women, Jews. Earlier, the wars were a concern of the nobility. It was the first time when the soldiers shouted "Hail the nation! Hail liberty!", instead of "Long live the King!". 

Tatars took part too:

The fight for freedom started by Tadeusz Kościuszko on 24 March 1794 ended on 11 November 1918 when Józef Piłsudski proclaimed an independent Polish state.

33 year old Piłsudski

And the last interesting bit, at least from the point of view where I write this, is that the highest peak in Australia is named after him.