Before my camp group left Warsaw for Załęcze, we made a stop at the Warsaw Uprising Museum. We were signed up for a tour that didn’t spend too much time outside of the main room but for what we did manage to see, the in-depth explanations took us beyond the displays.
The main room of the museum had dim lighting; the interior was mostly stone with a flash of light coming from a glass wall on the left. A collection of signs, drawers and, speakers were scattered along the wall. Graphic images and displays were tucked away in barrels or chimney-looking structures with warnings of graphic content plastered on the sides.
I expected to return and tell you the atmosphere was solemn when I imagined writing this blog ahead of the visit but while on the tour, I was unable to focus because the sound of a heartbeat thundered throughout the building. The pounding put me on edge. I was unreasonably panicky and teary as I thought about war stories I knew.
While all of this bounced around in my head and heart, I walked over to the glass wall to peer into the next dark room. Beams of light were pointed at the ceiling, similar to anti-aircraft lights. The lights spun over the nose of an old plane as if the propeller was spinning in flight. But, the propeller with the spinning light was not the nose of the plane. What I thought to be the wing of the small plane, thickened and connected to the body of a giant bomber plane. The propeller section was only a part of the huge plane, too massive to comprehend hundreds of flying over a city.
The destruction of Warsaw and the people were on the walls, the heartbeat in your ears and the instrument of destruction flew overhead.
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