Robert Edsel's Blog

Today marks the 71st anniversary of Kristallnacht, an evening in Germany when hundreds of synagogues were burned, thousands of shops destroyed, and many lives lost.  Nazi Germany’s attack on its Jewish population was fully underway and in the open for all to see.  Theft of their belongings, imprisonment, and mass murder, under the most gruesome and inhumane of circumstances, ensued.

While these horrific events took place in Germany, the lessons we should never forget are universal and lasting. We ignore them at our own peril as a civilization.  Anytime one person or one race preaches superiority at the expense of others, warning bells should sound.

We must therefore consider the fall of the Berlin wall 20 years ago an astounding moment of progress in modern civilization.  What a remarkable achievement that the end of the Cold War came with a spontaneous celebration, not the sound of gunfire or artillery.  It took a long time for this portion of World War II to come to its natural conclusion, but the moment did come.  It should never be overlooked, as a triumph for freedom, and a victory for a more hopeful Germany as a nation.

In the course of research for my new book, The Monuments Men, and while filming The Rape of Europa, I had a chance to get to know the country of Poland and its remarkable people. During the period we were filming in both Cracow and Warsaw, I took a couple of days off to visit some other sites, in particular Auschwitz…the ghastly site of the concentration camps where millions of Jews and other victims of Hitler’s “final solution” were murdered.

When visiting such places, I go with a mind full of images and stories I have seen and heard, eager to merge them with the physical experience of being there. No matter how many images a person sees of Warsaw and the devastation it experienced as a consequence of World War II, it doesn’t really take hold until you walk the streets of the city, look into people’s eyes (especially those of the children), and see the great attractions which illuminate so well the history of the city and its citizens. This was my experience in Warsaw, a beautiful city today but one that looked like the pock-marked surface of the moon after the Nazis lade waste to it as they fled. You can’t believe the city is the same place.

One image that spoke volumes about how determined the Nazis were to destroy not just the Polish people’s lives and property but also the very soul of the nation and its values concerns the statue of the great music composer Frederic Chopin. This remarkable sculpture was unveiled in Lazienki Park in 1926. During summer, piano recitals are held at the foot of the monument. Note its scale by focusing on the people sitting on the bench to the left in the photo below. This is how it appears to visitors today.

The bronze monument to Poland's greatest musician, Frederic Chopin, was designed by Waclaw Symanowski and erected in Warsaw in 1910.

However, in 1941, a little more than a year after the Nazi invasion of Poland, the statue was dissected by the Nazis and placed on a flatbed railcar for transport to a smelter. This was but just one of enumerable acts by Hitler and the Nazis to destroy the most treasured cultural icons of each conquered city. In Russia notable such examples were the homes of the great poet Pushkin, and the remarkable composer Peter Tchaikovsky

Fryderck Chopin Monument cut up on rail car. (Photo Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administratiion.)

When I boarded the plane to depart Poland, I couldn’t help but admire so deeply the courage and fortitude of the Polish people. The Poles were the first victims of the Nazi invasion on this day 70 years ago. By war’s end more than 6 million Poles had died. Nazi Concentration camps had been built throughout the country at which millions of innocent people were murdered. The list of horrifying events that took place during World War II seems endless. Yet through it all, the Polish people found the will not just to survive, but to flourish. Their determination to rebuild their great cities and society as it was before the war is a living testament to the pride they have for the great history of Poland, and their courage and determination to triumph.