Three architectural sites we saw yesterday cause me to reflect. One was just a
matter of coincidence. An Orthodox synagogue survived the war because someone
in the German army thought the best way to insult it was to re- purpose it as a
stable. Exactly the same form of insult occurred to nineteenth century French
forces invading Italy. This is how the church buildings that contain the Last
Supper avoided desecration and destruction that others suffered.
The second site again involved religious and secular forces. Warsaw's largest
Catholic Church is dwarfed by apartment blocks from the Communist era and by
the Palace of Culture and Science, a massive skyscraper. It is as if
authorities set out to diminish the power of the church with bigger buildings.
And today, after a study concluded that blowing up Stalin's skyscraper would
cause too much collateral damage, in a kind of mirror image move it in turn has
been surrounded by capitalist skyscrapers.
People have also found lots of good uses of the space and the line to visit the
top is long.
The third site was just an old wall marked by bullets. Here was where large
numbers of people involved in the Warsaw uprising were executed by Germans
while, under Stalin's orders the Red Army camped a few miles away. When the
guide told his joke we had just left this site. I should have written that the
joke resonated with both history and myth; much of what the guide told us about
Poles had a mythological tint--plucky and kind and marvelously crazy and
intelligent Poles who persist in spite of every infraction on their
independence.
David Ritchie
Warsaw
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