Holocaust Landscapes by Tim Cole, the chapter on “GHETTO” tells the accounts of Janina Bauman and her family who are Jews, and live in the Warsaw ghetto. Janina had a privileged upbringing and the status of having the means, gave the Bauman’s an opportunity, most did not have in the ghetto. They were able to pay smugglers to get food, medicine, other items from the other side of the wall. As I am reading this, I’m imagining a wall, maybe of average, even a little taller in size.
While on our tour of the Krakow ghetto, our tour guide, Maciek Zabierowski pointed out that the Krakow wall is the original wall from the war. After he stated that fact, all I thought about were the smugglers and what it took to scale the walls for not just the Bauman family, but others too. The ability to be completely incognito and transparent from the guards, both leaving and returning to the ghetto is simply… remarkable. The lengths these individuals went through, risking their own lives, daily, just to provide a piece of benevolence from the outside world.
May 18