I have two favorite movies about WWII Warsaw, Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002), and the more recent Zookeeper's Wife (2017) [although I liked the book better]. Jakob the Liar (1999) with Robin Williams is another very powerful movie.

But it was the last part of the Polanski film that struck me most. After years of hiding, the pianist finally hears an end to the bombing and gunfire outside his Warsaw hiding place. All he sees is rubble - by the end of the war, 85% of Warsaw had been destroyed.

My first trip to Poland was in July, 2005. I didn't sleep well after we landed in Warsaw, and I woke up before dawn. Rather than lie in bed awake, I decided to go out walking. I spent three hours walking in the early morning light of Warsaw, and the area where I walked seemed to have been there forever. I found out later that the normal-looking area where I walked, had been the Warsaw Ghetto. I saw little memorials here and there, but not really much to tell me that this had been the home of Warsaw's huge Jewish population.

Except for that silly Communist skyscraper in the center of town, most of Warsaw appears to have been restored to look like it did before the war. It's something how we can erase so much of the sorrow and suffering that has gone on before. In all of Poland, only Auschwitz is left to tell the tale.

-Joe-