Visitors can upload a photograph of a Holocaust victim or survivor, and the site’s facial recognition technology will compare it to its vast archives, returning the ten most likely matches.
Patt’s motivation is deeply personal: all four of his grandparents were Holocaust survivors from Poland. His initial goal was to help his grandmother recover photographs of her family members who were murdered during the Holocaust. When the war began, she was nine years old and fled her hometown of Zamość with her father and siblings. Her mother — Patt’s great-grandmother — remained behind and was shot and killed during the Nazi invasion. Later, her brother was killed when he attempted to return to rescue her. The rest of the family survived and eventually emigrated to New York City after the war.
Before the Second World War, Częstochowa’s Jewish community was thriving — nearly 40,000 people, about one-third of the city’s population. They played a central role in the city’s commerce, industry, and culture. Today, fewer than 100 remain.
The World Society of Częstochowa Jews and Their Descendants works to preserve this history. One of their recent projects was translating a rare 1936 Jewish newspaper from Częstochowa — a fragile time capsule of life before the German invasion.
Częstochowa, in southern Poland, is perhaps best known for the Pauline Monastery of Jasna Góra, home to the Black Madonna painting and a major pilgrimage site. But for my father, Abram Enzel, the city holds far more personal memories. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Częstochowa’s Jews were forced into a ghetto and later deported to the Treblinka death camp. About 5,200 survived by working in HASAG, a forced labor camp on the city’s outskirts. My father was one of them.
During my recent visit to Gdańsk, I stopped at the Museum of the Second World War. Even before stepping inside, the building grabbed my attention. It was designed by Studio Architektoniczne Kwadrat, the winners of an international competition in 2010 for the museum’s architecture.
The structure is bold and unsettling—its sharply angled form slices upward from the earth like a wound. The massively leaning tower seems to rise from underground, symbolizing the rupture of war and the tension between past and present. In many ways, the outer architecture spoke louder to me than the exhibits inside.
Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk
This was my first visit, and I came genuinely curious: how does Poland tell the story of World War II?
The answer turned out to be complicated. The museum presents a deeply Polish view of the war—understandably so, given Poland was invaded and brutalized by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The exhibition highlights this trauma and the bravery of the Polish people. But as a resource on broader wartime history or its moral complexities, I found it less impressive.
In particular, I noticed what wasn’t there. Polish antisemitism before, during, and after the war is barely addressed. The role of Polish collaborators or bystanders in the persecution of Jews is downplayed or ignored. Instead, the narrative leans heavily into Polish heroism and victimhood, avoiding harder truths that also belong to the historical record. I don’t raise this to diminish Polish suffering—but because good history demands honesty, even when it’s uncomfortable.
This criticism isn’t mine alone. When the museum opened in 2017, it was widely praised for its inclusive, civilian-focused narrative. Historian Timothy Snyder called it “perhaps the most ambitious museum devoted to the second world war in any country”. But soon after, the Law and Justice Party (PiS)-led government began reshaping its direction. Minister Piotr Gliński dismissed founding director Paweł Machcewicz, and a group of 500 historians and academics signed an open letter condemning the changes as “unacceptable, even barbaric interference,” accusing the government of turning the site into a “propaganda institution.” These developments are also explored in a blog post by Cameron Hewitt for Rick Steves Europe: Poland’s New World War II Museum — Who Gets to Tell the Story?
Visitors interact with digital displays beneath stark black-and-white images at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk.
By contrast, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw offers a more introspective experience. POLIN confronts Polish complicity, antisemitism, and the full arc of Jewish life in Poland—including the violent aftermath of WWII. It trusts visitors with complexity and nuance; here, questions aren’t only raised—they’re interrogated.
I left the Gdańsk museum feeling I understood more about how Poland sees World War II—and less about the war itself. In that sense, the museum is valuable—but not as a comprehensive or balanced historical resource. It’s a window into national memory, shaped by architecture, politics, and selective storytelling.
If you’re visiting Gdańsk, I still recommend walking around the museum. The building alone is worth the stop. But if you’re seeking a fuller understanding of WWII and its legacy in Poland, there are richer, more honest places to begin—like POLIN in Warsaw or the memorials at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The Museum of the Second World War is a striking architectural shell—but what it chooses not to say may be its most telling feature.
The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw is both a monument to a lost civilization and a cultural institution of the highest caliber. Housed in a striking contemporary building on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto, the museum traces 1,000 years of Jewish life in Polish lands—from early migrations and the Golden Age through the partitions, the Holocaust, and into the present day.
Facing the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, the POLIN Museum stands on the site of the prewar Jewish neighborhood and wartime ghetto. Together, the museum and monument form a powerful memorial complex. One visits the monument to honor those who died by remembering how they died. One enters the museum to honor them—and those who came before and after—by remembering how they lived.
The building’s striking glass façade and golden interior passage evoke both continuity and fracture on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto.
One of the museum’s most impressive features is the reconstruction of the wooden synagogue from Gwoździec. This soaring, hand-painted structure, recreated using traditional methods, pays tribute not only to Jewish religious architecture but also to the vibrancy and beauty of a world that once was.
The museum handles Poland’s long Jewish history with beauty, care, and deep respect. Yet I found myself wondering: how deeply does POLIN grapple with the antisemitism that existed in Poland before the German invasion? The subject is present—in interwar exhibits, newspaper clippings, and political histories—but easy to miss, especially amid the museum’s emphasis on Jewish life rather than victimhood. Perhaps this is deliberate. The goal, after all, is education, not alienation. Still, it’s hard to tell the full story of Jewish life in Poland without acknowledging how often Jews were made to feel like outsiders—even before the Holocaust began.
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, the museum’s chief curator, once said: “We are creating a museum of life, not a museum of death.” That vision is palpable throughout POLIN’s galleries. The museum honors what was lost while insisting that Jewish history in Poland must also be remembered for what it was: rich, complex, and deeply woven into the national fabric.
At the heart of the POLIN Museum stands a dazzling reconstruction of the wooden synagogue from Gwoździec, a small town once located in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (now in Ukraine).
So what is the purpose of POLIN today? A Polish guide I met during my travels said the museum is primarily intended for Poles, almost all of whom are not Jewish. There’s truth in that. In a country where 90% of the prewar Jewish population was murdered and few Jews remain, the museum serves not only as remembrance but also as education. It is also, arguably, part of Poland’s broader effort to grapple with its past while promoting cultural tourism. Jewish heritage sites have become cultural and economic assets—a reality that raises uneasy questions about purpose and presentation.
Still, none of that should diminish what POLIN has accomplished. It does not shy away from difficult chapters. It honors what was lost while celebrating what was lived. And for Jewish and non-Jewish visitors alike, it offers a place to learn, reflect, and—perhaps most importantly—feel the weight of presence where so much absence remains.
When I visited the Royal Castle in Warsaw, I was struck not only by the grandeur of its interior rooms but by the weight of history they carried. Gilded ceilings, restored frescoes, and polished parquet floors radiated an elegance that felt both authentic and improbable—especially knowing that everything I saw had been painstakingly reconstructed in the 1970s and 1980s, decades after the original interiors were destroyed during World War II.
The Royal Castle in Warsaw rebuilt brick by brick after its wartime destruction—now a national symbol of resilience.
The Royal Castle (Zamek Królewski w Warszawie), which stands at the entrance to Warsaw’s Old Town, has long embodied Poland’s national identity. For centuries, it served as the official royal residence and administrative heart of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was here, in 1791, that lawmakers adopted the Constitution of May 3—the first modern constitution in Europe, and the second in the world after that of the United States.
But by the end of the 18th century, Poland had lost its sovereignty. Through a series of three partitions, Russia, Prussia, and Austria carved up the territory, erasing Poland from the map of Europe for more than a century.
My father was born in 1916 in Kamyk, a village near Częstochowa—home to the revered Black Madonna. At the time, Poland did not exist as an independent country. Kamyk lay within the Russian Partition, a region ruled by the Russian Empire since the late 1700s. By 1916, however, the area was under German military occupation, following advances on the Eastern Front during World War I. Poland would regain its independence just two years later, in 1918, after the collapse of the partitioning empires.
Portraits of Polish monarchs in a room restored from fragments and memory.
In the years following the partitions, foreign rulers redesigned the Castle in neoclassical style. When Poland regained its sovereignty in 1918, the Castle became the official residence of the Polish head of state.
World War II brought devastation. German planes bombed the Castle in 1939, and after the failed Warsaw Uprising in 1944, Nazi forces deliberately destroyed what remained. The Castle lay in ruins.
Under the postwar communist regime, reconstruction was delayed. But in time, rebuilding the Castle became both a political and cultural act of defiance. Polish citizens contributed funds. Historians, architects, and artisans turned to prewar drawings, paintings, and photographs to guide the work. Between 1971 and 1984, the Castle rose again—rebuilt atop its surviving cellars, foundations, the adjacent Copper-Roof Palace, and the Kubicki Arcades.
Today, the Royal Castle is not just a museum; it is a monument to what was lost—and to what was recovered. It houses one of Poland’s most important collections of national and European art. In 1980, UNESCO recognized both the Castle and Warsaw’s Old Town as a World Heritage Site. And in 2024 alone, over 2.14 million people visited—making it one of the most visited art museums in the world.
No detail overlooked: a gilded chamber echoing with royal formality and artistic pride.
I recently returned from a journey through Poland—a place both beautiful and burdened. As I walked the streets of Warsaw, Kraków, and smaller towns tied to my family’s past, I found myself reckoning not just with personal memory, but with the immense suffering and resilience that have shaped this country.
Graffiti spelling “POLSKA” on a brick wall in Gdansk. Pride, resilience, and memory coexist in Poland’s streets—just as they do in its history.
Poland was not only the first victim of World War II—it was also one of the most devastated. In 1939, it was invaded and carved up by two brutal regimes: Nazi Germany from the west, and the Soviet Union from the east. What followed was a six-year onslaught of destruction, repression, and mass murder.
By war’s end, an estimated six million Polish citizens were dead—roughly 17% of the population. Half of them were Jews murdered in the Holocaust. The other half were primarily ethnic Poles who perished in bombings, executions, forced labor, resistance fighting, and Soviet purges (Wikipedia – World War II casualties of Poland).
The physical destruction was staggering. Warsaw, the capital, was deliberately reduced to rubble after the 1944 uprising—85 to 90 percent of the city was destroyed. Nationally, about 30% of Poland’s infrastructure and wealth was lost, and over 40% of its cultural property—including archives, libraries, and religious sites—was looted or obliterated (Polish War Reparations Bureau – Wikipedia summary).
Yet even after the war, Poland was not free. Instead of liberation, it fell under Soviet domination. For nearly five decades, the Polish people lived under Communist rule imposed by Moscow. The state censored speech, imprisoned dissenters, and suppressed any honest reckoning with what the country had endured.
But Poland’s vulnerability didn’t begin in 1939. From the late 18th century until the end of World War I, Poland did not exist as an independent nation. For more than a century, it was partitioned by Russia, Prussia, and Austria—wiped off the map. My father was born in 1916, during that period of nonexistence. Poland would only re-emerge as a sovereign state in 1918, two years after his birth, following the end of the Great War.
Then came the Second World War, bringing unimaginable suffering. My father, born near Częstochowa, survived the HASAG slave labor camp and was later imprisoned at the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, and from there transferred to Flossenbürg and Dachau. He was one of the very few to survive. His parents and most of his extended family were murdered. For my father—as for so many Polish Jews—there was no going home.
Today, Poland is a member of NATO, and there is hope that the alliance provides the kind of protection it lacked in the past. But I find myself wondering: Would NATO and the United States truly defend Poland if attacked by Russia? Or would the West abandon Poland again, as it did in 1939? I don’t know the answer. I hope we never have to find out.
Yet there is another truth I cannot ignore. As a Jew, I deeply value Poland’s efforts to remember the Holocaust—through museums, memorials, and scholarship. I was moved by what I saw. But I also felt that Poland has yet to fully come to terms with the long history of antisemitism that predates Nazi Germany. I say this not in a spirit of accusation, but of reflection. While Germany has publicly and institutionally confronted its role in the Holocaust, Poland has often struggled to acknowledge how deeply antisemitism was woven into the social fabric—even before the war. There were Poles who risked everything to save Jews, and they deserve enduring honor. But there were also Poles who betrayed, exploited, or turned away—and that, too, must be faced.
What struck me most during my visit was how present the past still feels. The scars are visible—in the rebuilt bricks of Warsaw’s Old Town, in the memorials to the ghetto, and in the ruins left untouched as testimony. But so too is the resilience. I saw it in young people reclaiming their history, in museums that confront difficult chapters, and in quiet moments of beauty: the light on cobblestones, the music in cafés, the sound of Polish spoken freely.
Before leaving, I asked a guide whether people in Poland today worry about defending their borders. He hesitated—perhaps reluctant to speak directly. But I sensed that the question lingered beneath the surface. Many Poles today do worry about their security, especially in light of Russia’s war against Ukraine. The country is investing heavily in defense and leans firmly on its NATO membership. Yet there is also a quiet anxiety—born of history—that Poland might again be left to face aggression alone.
Still, life goes on. There’s a tension here: between living with history and not being consumed by it. Poles carry that burden with remarkable dignity.
Poland’s story is not only one of tragedy. It is also a story of survival, rebuilding, and memory. Visiting gave me a deeper appreciation not only for what this country has lived through, but also for the dignity with which it remembers—and the silences it still must break.
The name Auschwitz is the German version of the Polish town Oświęcim, located about 40 miles (64 km) west of Kraków. After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the region was annexed into the Third Reich.
The railway tracks leading into Auschwitz II–Birkenau. From 1944, this was the arrival point for hundreds of thousands of deportees, many of whom were sent directly to their deaths upon arrival.
In 1940, Nazi Germany established a concentration camp on the outskirts of Oświęcim, known today as Auschwitz I, or the Main Camp. In 1941, they began building a much larger killing center two miles away in the village of Brzezinka, renamed Birkenau. This site — Auschwitz II — became the heart of the extermination process.
That is the geography and the history. But what I found when I arrived went far beyond what books and maps can convey.
Despite years of studying photographs, listening to survivor testimonies, and watching documentaries, nothing prepared me for Auschwitz II–Birkenau. Not its immense scale, nor the unsettling quiet that hung over the gray May morning in 2025 when I arrived.
In September 1982, I visited Dachau with my father. He had been imprisoned at HASAG, a Nazi forced labor camp in Częstochowa, and was later transferred through a series of camps as the Nazis evacuated prisoners westward in the final stages of the war. In 1944, he was sent from HASAG to Gross-Rosen, then to Flossenbürg, and finally to Dachau.
Gate to the Death Wall – Block 11, Auschwitz I
One of his most harrowing memories was the transfer from Flossenbürg to Dachau. Along with 500 other prisoners, he was first forced to march, then packed into freight cars “like cattle,” as he later described in a 1973 interview with the Pittsburgh Press. Only 18 of the 500 survived the journey. My father was one of them.
During our visit to Dachau in 1982, my father shared this story in German with a group of high school students. Hearing him speak about what he had endured—on the very ground where his imprisonment had ended—moved me deeply. Yet even with that experience, Birkenau struck me in ways I hadn’t expected.
Although Dachau had a gas chamber, historical evidence suggests it was never used for mass executions. It was equipped and capable—part of the same machinery of terror—but not used systematically for mass murder like the crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Most deaths at Dachau occurred through forced labor, shootings, disease, and medical experiments. Still, standing in that room with my father years ago was sobering. Even unused, the gas chamber embodied the intent of a system built on death.
His brother—my uncle—was deported to Auschwitz and survived. He was among those liberated when the Red Army arrived in January 1945. These are not just historical facts to me; they are the roots of my identity.
So I came to Auschwitz not as a historian, nor just as a photographer, but as a son and a nephew. I didn’t come seeking understanding—I don’t believe Auschwitz can be understood. I came to listen, to stand where memory persists, and to bear witness.
What struck me most wasn’t a particular building or exhibit, but the vastness of Birkenau. It spans roughly 346 acres—more than half a square mile of barracks, chimneys, tracks, and ruins. It felt like a mechanized landscape of erasure, a place where lives were reduced, processed, and obliterated. The train tracks still slice through the camp. Rows of chimneys stretch toward the forest line. The emptiness felt both infinite and suffocating. At one point, I stopped walking and heard only the gravel under my shoes and the wind moving through the wire. It was a silence not of peace, but of reverberation.
Wooden bunks where prisoners slept in overcrowded, in humane conditions.
Auschwitz is one of the most visited Holocaust memorial sites in the world. In recent years, more than two million people a year have come—students, families, descendants of survivors, visitors from every corner of the globe. That fact lingered with me as I walked. I knew I was one of many, yet I felt completely alone.
During my visit, I saw two groups of Israelis. The first were students, draped respectfully in Israeli flags, walking the grounds where their history was nearly erased. The second were soldiers in uniform—quiet, focused, listening intently to their guides. They were not tourists, but heirs to a story that had nearly ended here. Their presence filled me with quiet pride and a sense of defiance. It felt like an answer—a living affirmation of survival and responsibility.
Inside the crematorium at Auschwitz I. Though smaller than the gas chambers later built at Birkenau, this was one of the earliest sites of industrialized murder. Its walls remain stained by fire and time.
I also visited the crematorium at Auschwitz I—preserved as part of the museum—and later, the ruins of the much larger gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau. These were the industrial centers of death.
The crematorium at Auschwitz I surprised me with its scale. It was smaller and more intimate than I had expected—but no less chilling. It was an early site of killing, later eclipsed by the vast machinery of death at Birkenau. There, the system of extermination became larger, more efficient, and partially hidden underground. Seeing the shattered remains of those later structures brought the full scope of the killing into terrifying clarity.
At Birkenau, the ruins sit in quiet collapse, half-swallowed by the earth. It’s one thing to know what happened there. It’s another to stand where it happened. The deliberate effort to erase these places—and the lives taken within them—was itself part of the crime.
A view of the barracks at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, seen through barbed wire.
I’m grateful to the many Poles who have preserved this site with care. I recognize that Auschwitz was built and operated by Germans, and that the responsibility for the Holocaust rests with them. But it would be dishonest to say I felt only gratitude. My visit stirred unease. Poland’s relationship with its Jewish past is complicated—marked by courage and complicity, remembrance and denial. Antisemitism did not begin or end with the camps. That truth is hard to ignore.
Still, I didn’t come to accuse. I came with questions. I came because I needed to be in the place where history and memory hang so heavily that even the air feels changed.
I left without answers. But I left with something else: a deeper connection to the voices that once filled this place, and a stronger sense of responsibility to keep their stories alive.
Memory alone is not enough. But without memory, nothing remains.
Abram Enzel was born in Częstochowa, Poland, on June 18, 1916, to Chaim and Faigle Enzel. Chaim worked as a kosher butcher. They had five children — three boys and two girls — with Abram as the firstborn. In 1939, there were 28,500 Jews living in Częstochowa, about 124 miles (200 km) southeast of Warsaw.
The Germans entered Częstochowa on Sunday, September 3, 1939, and persecution of its Jews began immediately. More than 300 Jews were killed the following day, in what became known as “Bloody Monday.” On December 25, 1939, a second pogrom took place, and the Great Synagogue was set on fire. The family survived both pogroms.
On the morning after Yom Kippur in September 1942, Abram was separated from his family. One brother, Nathan, had previously been taken by the Germans to a concentration camp. The rest of Abram’s family was gassed and cremated three days later in Treblinka.
Abram was sent to work in a munitions plant operated by HASAG (Hugo Schneider Aktiengesellschaft-Metalwarenfabrik, Leipzig), one of the largest German industrial companies using concentration camp prisoners to manufacture armaments. HASAG was the third largest such company after I.G. Farben and the Hermann Göring Werke. It operated four camps in Częstochowa, the largest of which — HASAG-Apparatebau — held 7,000 Jewish prisoners. The wages of these forced laborers were paid directly to the SS. Those unfit for work were killed under the policy of Vernichtung durch Arbeit (“extermination through work”). From July 1944 to early 1945, HASAG moved most of its equipment and Jewish workers to Germany. No HASAG personnel were tried by the Allies at Nuremberg.
In 1944, Abram was transferred from HASAG to Gross-Rosen, then to Flossenbürg, and finally to Dachau. One of his most haunting memories was the transfer from Flossenbürg to Dachau with 500 prisoners. In a 1973 Pittsburgh Press interview, Abram recalled: “They made us march at first. But later they herded us like cattle on some old freight cars.” Only 18 of the 500 survived to reach Dachau — Abram among them.
On April 29, 1945, the 42nd and 45th Infantry Divisions and the 20th Armored Division of the U.S. Army liberated Dachau. The next day, Adolf Hitler committed suicide. Abram weighed just 78 pounds at liberation, compared to a healthy 130 pounds before the war.
By June 1946, 2,167 Jews had returned to Częstochowa, but Abram chose not to. He recovered in Germany, ran a grocery store in Bayreuth, and emigrated to the United States in 1951, settling in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
In Pittsburgh, Abram met Dora Weiss, a survivor from Munkács, Czechoslovakia (now Mukačevo, Ukraine). Her parents were murdered in Auschwitz. They married on June 8, 1952, and had one son, David, born January 21, 1955.
Dora died of cancer on July 30, 1958, at age 35. Abram never remarried. He worked at H.J. Heinz before joining the Concordia Club, where he rose from busboy to maître d’. He considered his 30 years there the happiest of his life.
David moved to Washington, D.C., in 1979. Abram retired in 1981 and soon followed. He died on May 10, 1994, in Washington, the capital of the country that had liberated him.
Anna, a young woman training to be a nun in 1960s Poland is on the verge of taking her vows when she meets her only living relative for the first time and learns that she is Jewish and that her real name is Ida Lebenstein. Together they discover what happened to Anna/Ida’s family.
This jewel is only 82 minutes long and every moment makes good use of the viewer’s time. The story is one example of the decimation of Poland’s Jews during World War II. But in the end, this is not a film about Poland or the Holocaust – but about life.
The film, which came out in 2013, is in black and white. The places photographed are ordinary yet the cinematography is stunning. Each scene looks like a black and white photograph made by a Magnum photographer using a Leica camera. Łukasz Żal is a superb, young cinemaphotographer born in Koszalin, Poland.
Ida is played by Agata Trzebuchowska. Her character is sweet, innocent and beautiful. Her aunt Wanda – Agata Kulesza – is also a fine actress.
Pawel Pawlikowski directed the film. He was born in Warsaw in 1957. At the age of 14, Pawlikowski left Poland to live in Germany and Italy, before settling in Britain. In 2004, he directed My Summer of Love with Emily Blunt and Natalie Press.
This film touched me deeply and left me thinking for a long time about what’s important and what’s not. It is among the best films I have seen.
