Warsaw - July 11, 2010

Memorial to Warsaw Ghetto 1940-1943

Inscription Marking Warsaw Ghetto Walls 1940-1943

Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery

Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery

Ulica Mila - location of Mila 18

Memorial to Warsaw Ghetto

Monument to the Heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto

Our group's day begins with a briefing by our extraordinary tour guide, leader and expert in Jewish Poland, Jacek Nowakowski, the Polish born curator of acquisitions and research at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum during breakfast at the Sheraton Hotel. Then we're off to our first day of touring. We drive to Memory Lane where we visit the monument to the Heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto, Mila 18, and Umschlagplatz. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the Jewish resistance that arose within the Warsaw Ghetto in German occupied Poland during WWII. Mila 18 is the address of the headquarters bunker of Jewish resistance fighters who lived underneath the building at ulica Mila 18 (in English it is 18 Pleasant Street) The Umschlagplatz is the spot at the northern boundary of the Warsaw Ghetto where the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto assembled to board the trains which transported them to the death camp at Treblinka, beginning in July, 1942. The last stop of the morning was at the Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery. It is one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe. The cemetery contains over 200,000 marked graves, as well as mass graves of victims of the Warsaw Ghetto.