look back in time..

Published by flag-it nahom worku — 4 years ago

Blog: cheers to new horizons
Tags: General

My dearly beloved companions today I will take you with me and give you a glimpse of an insightful museum in the city of Gdansk: museum of the Second World War. There might be a million ways to spend an afternoon in such a beautiful city and I chose to stay in my room and do some reading but little did I know that my friend was knocking at my door and asking me to join her to the museum, and so I did.

From where our dorm is located we had to walk to the tram stop and make our way to the iconic old town of Gdansk and then continued walking some more untill we got to our destination and look what we found...

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Courtesy of www.voanews.com (https://www.voanews.com/a/fate-of-polish-wwii-museum-unclear-amid-battle-over-history/3689125.html)

The stairs lead to the entrance of the museum which from the outside has a very alternative and dynamic facade so we could't contain ourselves and run into the main  foyer. Large and voluminous spaces characterize the inside, it almost feels like there is no boundary to the horizon... it makes you feel very small and vulnerable at the same time. We didn't waste more time so we hurried to the ticket desk and couldn't help ourselves from smiling when we got our student discounts, and with the audio guide in our hands we made our way to the exposition area, which much to our surprise was located on the  third underground level.

Exposition area

From this point on it was a full immersion into Europe's historical background starting from the early ages of the first World War and on to the Second World War. Led by my english audio guide I took a left turn (by this time me and my friend were separated so each one can move by their own pace) and I was astonished by the mesmerizing recreation of a former town street

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Many where the elements which depicted day to day life, from the uniforms of the soldiers decorated with ''coulorfull'' pins and badges to empty bottles with a stamp of the SS soldiers. Another thing that cought my attention was this wall completely covered with suitcases

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Supposedly belonging to the jews that where victims of the deportation to the mass massacre camps. One of many is Birkenau with its tall fenced walls making a way in for the many trains who carried innocent souls later subdued to the worst of all atrocities of the past century.

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It is one thing to learn about this sad historical events in history class but when you are almost directly confronted with a place that contains vivid remnants of this horor you can not help but have continuos goosebumps all over you. I kept on walking from one exposition to the other and lost control of this thing they call ''time'', four and a half hours spent trying to understand and somehow put myself in the shoes of the many individuals who suffered from this tragedy: a jew who got deported and lost his dignity, a polish citizen losing his right to proclaim himslef as such.

Now that is an awesome way to escape from the the polish cold winter and submerge oneself into the past though in the midst of all of this I lost my friend inside the exposition area and I couldn't contact her because there wasn't any network coverage there so I went outside and waited for her patienly. Luckily she came out pretty quickly and exchanging our thoughts and impressions of what we visited, we joined a group of friends for dinner.

This is my first blog and the beginning of many more to come. (I hope you can't tell from the unedited images)

Cheers everyone!


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