Palatial gardens, the Warsaw ghetto

Our schedule for today.

This statue of Chopin shows him sitting under a willow tree, listening to the wind blowing through the leaves.  The park containing the statue is being turned into a music venue for concerts of Chopin's music.

Along the street were a set of rather startling black-and-white posters of Poles famous in the arts.  This is Jerzy Kawalerowicz, a movie director ("Quo Vadis").

This former palace is a guest house for international VIPs.  Queen Elizabeth stayed here.

This building, now housing government offices, was the headquarters of the Gestapo in Warsaw during World War II.

We went next to a 200-acre park containing multiple palaces.  One of Poland's kings made what had been a bath house into a full-fledged palace.

This palace has a beautiful waterfront setting.

The street we were walking along in the park is the only one in Warsaw that still has gas lights, because of the nighttime ambiance they provide.

This small palace is called the White House.  Apparently because of its (relatively) insignificant size, it was not destroyed by the Nazis when they leveled most of Warsaw near the end of World War II.

Beautiful gardens leading to the next palace complex.

There were lots of peacocks on the palace grounds, with the males showing off for the visitors.  These peacocks seem well cared for, unlike some in zoos back home.

A beautiful amphitheater, colorful boats on the lake, classical architecture and sculpture.

A map showing the extent of the park.  It's right next to downtown Warsaw, but the traffic can't even be heard in the center of the park.

After leaving the park, we went to one of the few places where part of the wall that was erected around the World War II Jewish ghetto still remains.  On this side was the ghetto, on the other side was the "Aryan" area.

The low curb in this photo is actually part of the ghetto wall.  The ghetto was to the right of the wall; the people are walking outside what was the ghetto.

This portion of the wall between two apartment blocks has also survived.

The Nazis excluded this street from the ghetto even though it passed directly through it, by building walls on both sides of the street and an elevated wooden bridge over the street so that ghetto inhabitants could get from one part of the ghetto to the other.  The bridge ran from just beyond the white building on the right to the other side of the street.  Number 7 on the map marks the bridge.

This monument to those who died in the ghetto and those who were transported from the ghetto to extermination camps was erected in 1947.  It's now in a small park in a residential area, but when it was built there was nothing but rubble around it.

The other side of the monument.

Still to come -- Chopin's birthplace, an evening concert, and dinner.