The sunrises and sunsets

Together with my friends I resolved to immortalize places, buildings, gardens, streets which were witnesses of the most tragic and cruel events in history of our native town. We are Polish inhabitants of Bialystok - town of many cultures, religions, languages in the north - eastern Poland. This is the place where the East meets the West; towers of Catholic and Orthodox churches soar above the town, Protestant churches, muslim mosque enrich Bialystok’s face.

Poles, Belarussians, Tatars, Russians, descendants of Germans are still hosts of our town, but Jews who before the II World War made up 50% of Bialystok’s population are absent. Majority of Jewish inhabitants was exterminated by German Nazis in 1941 - 1944. Only a few hundreds of Jews were able to save their lives. Presently there are no open and functioning synagogues or houses of prayer, no lively Jewish community in Bialystok.

This post is dedicated to places which during the II World War found itself in the borders of the ghetto area, where German Nazis gathered about 50.000 Jews.

Evening in Czysta street. View from Czysta street, on the left - house in ghetto were Samuel Pisar lived.

 

House in the courtyard in Czysta street no 5.

 

Old buildings in Czestochowska street, near Czysta and Warynskiego street.

 

Warynskiego street, near Cytron Synagogue, in front of - yellow and brown building was a school for Jewish girls before the Second World War.

I have always been amazed by the contrasts included in beautiful places. How is it possible that place that witnessed most cruel events in the world history may at the same time include so much beauty? I mean contrast between internal appearance of a place and history it contains.

The most beautiful gardens in my native town are on the areas of the former ghetto. Bialystok’s history has not witnessed more cruel period than time of the II World War, when about 50.000 Jews were gatherd in interior part of the town, where German Nazis organizied ghetto. Those beuatiful gardens, wooden small houses, old bulidings, old trees, lush green of the gardens, many colurs of flowers, picturesque paved streets, red brick factories were witnesses of unimaginable cruelties in human kind’s history - murders of hundreds of innocent children, women, men; later on uprising in Bialystok ghetto and deaths of further hundreds of persons.

Now spring has just come nad those places start again to be the most beautiful places in the town. They are still grey, but in a short time they will explode with lush green and many other bright colurs of the Bialystok gardens.

Is it possible to understand such an indifference of nature to human kind suffering?

On the left - part of the synagogue in Warynskiego street, on the right - old building, both from the begining of the XX century, on the area of former ghetto.



Small wooden house in Czysta 5 street, where Samuel Pisar - surviver of Bialystok ghetto, later on adviser of John Fitzgerald Kennedy - lived in inferno of Bialystok ghetto.



Wooden remnant of the ghetto gate between stones in Czysta street.



View of the Czysta street from the place were ghetto gate stood.



Houses in Czysta street, on the left - Czysta 5 - wooden house where Samuel Pisar lived.