Last week my students at the University of Warsaw responded to my assignment and gave terrific presentations on war memorials: one in Warsaw, one in Moscow, one in Murmansk. (Tomorrow another student will speak about a memorial in Budapest.) The "Four Sleeping Soldiers" monument is currently again controversial, because the new metro line being built on the "Praga" side of Warsaw (the right bank of the Wisla or Vistula) runs right through its former location. The class was split. On the one hand, of course, this monument -- like the hated Palace of Cultures -- was a "gift" from the Soviets in 1945. The soldiers represent the Soviet military and economic influence over Poland after WWII, and the location of the statue makes the destruction of Warsaw by the Nazis after the Warsaw uprising of August 1944 that much more bitter -- everyone knows that the Soviets sat on the right bank and watched the Nazis dynamite Warsaw's downtown. The beautiful ...
A blog about travel and staying put, reading and writing, food and food for thought.