Warsaw - Eli Sporn

Warsaw, Poland. The second largest Jewish community next to New York by the 1930s.
In Warsaw, there are various remnants of Jewish life. We visited monuments to many
members of the Warsaw ghetto as well as a cemetery to Jewish citizens of Warsaw.

The Warsaw cemetery was built in 1806 by the Jewish population of Warsaw. This cemetery
housed many important Jewish figures from Poland. This includes Abraham Sui Pelmater,
a rabbi who formed kosher kitchens in the Polish army for Jewish soldiers, Bareli Sonenberg,
a man with great wealth and charity, Adam Czerniakow, the head of the Judenrat during
the time of the Warsaw Ghetto, Lazaro Ludoviko Zamenhof, the creator of the universal
language of Esperanto, Isaac Leib Peretz, arguably the greatest influencer of
Yiddish culture in novels and in life itself, the Bund leaders, who aided in the Warsaw
uprising and other revolutionary efforts, and many other influential Jews.
This cemetery also included the graves of one hundred thousand Jews who
died in the Warsaw Ghetto, piled into a mass grave with taliet stones surrounding it.
The graves also had inscriptions showing a core value or ethical path that the person
followed, including charity, religious devotion, and wisdom.

Next, we visited main parts of the ghetto itself, which also brought various memorials to other

influential Jews in the ghetto. These influential Jews, amongst others, include Janusz Korczak, a man who helped aid orphans in the ghetto, Yitzhak Itzenbagen, who ended Kiddush Hashem and employed Kiddush Hachaim, Fruma Plonitska and other women smugglers, who aided many Jews in Warsaw and throughout Poland with the spread of information and goods. There was also a large memorial to the many people who passed away after being deported from the Warsaw Ghetto elsewhere and to the many revolutionaries who aided in the Warsaw uprising.

There were many examples of people who made a large impact on their society
through small acts of kindness and helping others. Throughout these people,
many different themes and ideas appear that they follow. Whose actions, ideas, or
beliefs do you relate to the most and why?