"Warsaw Ghetto symbol under threat; Could be razed for a skyscraper" by Vanessa Gera | Associated Press, February 03, 2013
WARSAW — It was the place where Jewish women did their ritual bathing. It was a tuberculosis clinic. It survived the German onslaught and became a gathering point for Holocaust survivors.
Now ‘‘the white building,’’ the headquarters of the Jewish community and one of the few surviving remnants of the infamous Warsaw Ghetto, could be torn down to make way for a multistory tower that would fit seamlessly into a modern city skyline.
Welcome to the world of a Palestinian.
The building’s fate will soon be determined by the Culture Ministry, which has been asked by advocates of historic preservation to declare it a historical monument, a classification that would ban its destruction.
It is not yet clear how officials will decide, though previous rulings by other state offices had declared the building not worth saving. Now those for and against destroying the old building are anxiously awaiting a verdict.
Not that I'm trying to be insensitive, but a meter has not been made that can measure my indifference to this story.
What is perhaps unexpected in this case is who is fighting for what: Warsaw’s Jewish community, which owns the dilapidated three-story building, is making the case for its destruction.
The community leaders argue that a bigger building is needed to accommodate a Jewish community that is reemerging in the young Polish democracy after the Holocaust and decades of communist repression.
The white building, in the heart of the city’s business district, is the place where the Jewish community gathers for lectures, Shabbat dinners, holidays, even sports.
Jewish leaders argue that it is too cramped, bleak, and fungus-infested to continue serving the needs of a community that has roughly tripled in number in the past decade.
‘‘An opinion that I can’t agree with is that the building is more important than the future of the community,’’ said Andrzej Zozula, vice president of the Jewish community. ‘‘Because unfortunately that’s the gist of the conflict.’’
Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich has even been evoking the precedent of King Herod rebuilding the Second Temple in Jerusalem some 2,000 years ago as he makes the case to tear the structure down.
Actually, there is no evidence that temple was ever there, but you really can't question the Jewish narrative of history without being called bad names.
‘‘As much as we respect the past, we build for the future,’’ Schudrich said. ‘‘As much as there was a holiness to the temple that stood, that temple was reconfigured to a much more grand scale to meet the needs, the desires of a living Jewish community. And so this in some way represents the struggle we have here.’’
Yes, Palestinians know that.
Btw, what the f*** did they have to do with any of this?
The debate is also a microcosm of deeper issues that emerge in city planning today in Warsaw, a city that was almost totally destroyed during World War II and which has seen massive development as the economy has boomed in the postcommunist era. Architectural gems key to the nation’s identity were meticulously rebuilt after the war — like Warsaw’s Royal Castle and Old Town Square.
Some prewar buildings here and there also survived, sometimes thanks to chance, sometimes because they headquartered the Nazis and were therefore spared the leveling that was the German response to two major uprisings — the Ghetto uprising of 1943 and a larger revolt by the entire city in 1944.
In the old ghetto area, almost nothing remains of the past. Just next to the white building stands the Nozyk synagogue, the only prewar synagogue still in existence in Warsaw. It survived because the Germans turned it into a horse stable.
I'm sorry, but I wrote a smile in the margin of my newspaper there to remind me to comment on the symbolism there.
There is a prewar church that largely survived across the street as well as four buildings on nearby Prozna Street, with aging brick facades still bearing bullet holes. Here and there fragments of the old ghetto wall can also be found.
The debate over the white building raises questions that underlie several building projects across the city: Should rare old buildings be saved if doing so holds back modernization? And which historical structures are worth saving?
In this case, opponents of the plan say Jewish leaders don’t have the right to destroy a rare surviving structure, arguing that it belongs to Poland’s larger patrimony. But Jewish leaders counter that it would be unfair if they are prevented from developing, when skyscrapers all around have long erased any trace of the area’s prewar character.
Yeah, what are you preservationists, a bunch of antisemites?
Though it has a cellar dating back more than two centuries, most of the building is about 130 years old and has undergone major transformations.
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You know what? I no longer need constant reminding in my paper of that unclear event that is increasingly becoming irrelevant in light of the holocausts of modern-day history.
