Warsaw’s legacy as a city razed by the Nazis is apparent in the Soviet-style architecture that defines its main town center. The facades are gray and severe, much like the early summer rain showers that marked my single day here. For a city that experienced such devastation, however, the story that is told in Warsaw is as much a story of survivors as it is about the victims of Nazi and Soviet occupation.
I spent most of my first day in the city at the Warsaw Uprising Museum. The fortress-like red brick structure immediately invokes in the visitor a feeling of entrapment, both physically and chronologically. One enters through the main gates and is guided by bronze arrows toward the museum proper (as well as the ticket counter and souvenir shop). The museum is dark and cavernous, with stone floors and plaster walls papered in vintage newspapers and flyers. In the center of the room is the towering monument to the Uprising: a two-story slab of black stone engraved with the symbol of the Uprising on one side. The other side is pocked with bullet holes, from within which emanates the sounds of war: gunshots, shouting, running, marching, radio broadcasts. Over everything, there is the constant sound of a heartbeat.
The heartbeat, according to the museum, represents the sacrifice of the Polish people, the still-living heart of the resistance movement, and the unification of Poles through hardship. The heartbeat follows the visitor through the museum, but you never quite get used to it. By the end of a few hours in the museum, it is a nearly overwhelming presence. As you view the portraits of resistance fighters, the working printing press, the relics and weapons and grave markers that populate the museum, the heartbeat remains. It appears meant to instill in the visitor the fact that the Jews in the ghettos and those who fought during the Uprising were active, real people, with lives and personalities that often get lost in the sometimes dry, sterile world of historiography.
The Uprising Museum’s main goal is plainly to write a narrative of the events of the Uprising from the point of view of those involved. It is an intense, multi-sensory experience that is meant to immerse the visitor in the experience of the Uprising. This type of immersive museum experience has become more popular in recent years as museums struggle to keep new generations engaged in history. Such experiences can be a powerful way of bringing the past to life, especially as conflicts lose their feeling of rawness and the fresh wounds begin to heal. But they can also feel overdramatized, and sometimes run the risk of idealizing those who they are commemorating. There is a thin line between artifact and holy relic, and the elevation of victims to martyrs can be disconcerting to some. It can be uncomfortably similar to the intense nationalism that leads to conflict to begin with, and does nothing to promote understanding or reconciliation.
Some might argue, however, that remembrance, not reconciliation, is the goal of a museum. I would posit that if museums are to remain relevant and active—like the people and events they are commemorating—then there can certainly be a place for the furthering of reconciliation in the goal of a museum. Understanding the stories of the past is a step toward this goal, but resolving lasting wounds and preventing future atrocities takes more effort than simply disseminating information.
Kelsey
Allagood is a Master of Arts candidate in Conflict Resolution at Georgetown
University. She recently traveled to Poland and Germany with Georgetown’s
School of Foreign Service in Qatar with the Zones of Conflict, Zones of Peace
Program. Her travel was facilitated by Georgetown University's Master of Arts
program in Conflict Resolution.
