Warsaw [antikvár]

If was October 1944; the Uprising had ended in surrender, and the Germans were chasing us all away from Warsaw - old people and young children, the wounded and the starved, insurgents and civilians. Behind us the city was burning. Behind us were the ruins of houses, while under the rubble lay the bodies of our friends and cornrades. More than two hundred and fifty thousand Varsovians, fallen or murdered during the sixty-day battle against the Nazi invaders, remained under the ruins of the city they defended, and which we were now leaving, perhaps forever. Endless columns of homeless men and women trudged down Jerozolimskie, Grójecka and Wolska Streets. The way was iined with Nazi gendarmes. Detachments of SS men marched towards mid-town Warsaw. On somé buiidings, soldiers were painting huge white ciphers. We díd not realize that we were witnessing the start of another chapter in Warsaw's history, which Hitler intended should be its last. It was nearly a year later, on a fine evening in the summer of 1945, that we were looking at Warsaw again. A hugef black sea of ruins beside which flowed the Vistula, as alive as always. We stood on the right bank of the river and tried to find familiar landmarks in the Warsaw skyline. But there were none. Not a single light. Darkness in place of mid-town Warsaw. Darkness in place of bridges. Darkness in Mokotów. When would we see lights on the left bank? Could we do it - could we turn íhis sea of ruins into a city of life and light, as it once was? Piac Zamkowy (Casíle Square) and King Sigismund Column, March, 1945