This first section focuses on ruins: it is, after all, the key reality
of the Jewish past in Poland. Jewish life was left in ruins after the
Holocaust. Poland, as seen through Jewish eyes, is largely a landscape
of ruins. There are two ways to look at these ruins, on one hand it is true to say that compared to what was in Poland before the war nothing remains. Likewise, considering the systematic fury of the destruction it is amazing that so much can still be seen today.
There is great variety to these ruins: synagogues open to the sky,
synagogues with bushes growing out from the roof, synagogues propped
up by scaffolding or with only the central pillars still standing.
Such images offer expressive silent testimony to the society that was
uprooted and destroyed, as do Hebrew-language wall-paintings that are
now virtually illegible.
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