In the Uprising Museum, we were also presented with a short 3D film entitled, “City of the Ruins,” which allowed us to witness the destruction of 95 percent of Warsaw — the Nazi’s retaliation for the uprising — and the reconstruction of the city in the mid-20th century, which not only consoled the traumatized Polish people in the second world, but also re-glorified the image of the city, especially through the re-creation of the Warsaw Old Town — a world cultural heritage selected by UNESCO.

It was a coincidence that the anniversary commemorating the Holocaust was held just outside the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews when we visited the place. With the torches and a statue symbolizing the suffering of Jews throughout history in the background, we entered the museum and traced back Jewish history since the Middle Ages when Poland became the center of the diaspora. It was an interactive exhibition showing Jewish people from all different walks of like — merchants, rabbis, politicians, scholars, artists, and commoners — through displays of artifacts, images, and sound effects. It was the first time that most of us had taken a glimpse of the inside of a synagogue from a model in the museum: the re-creation sported animal images and patterns in highly saturated colors and manifested its majesty in a different manner than the gilded Catholic church.

The museum informed us that the Jews were sometimes accepted by and incorporated into societies where their religious practices and daily activities were respected, however, during several historical periods, Jews were severely discriminated against and oppressed. Through the antisemitic posters published in the prelude to World War II, it became more evident that the Jews were the scapegoats for many social and economic distresses. A poster in 1936 explaining the ban on Jewish ritual slaughter used the pretext of the Jews’ cruelty to animals; however, the real grounds for the ban were to reduce the competitiveness of the Jewish butchers selling cheaper meat, which was, in turn, to pacify the grudges of Polish butchers and maintain their support of the government.

The countless accusations that demonized the Jews as an ethnic and religious group also drew parallels to some of the attitudes at present towards Muslims.

It is worrisome to be reminded of the extremes that human nature can go to in demolishing a group of people; whereas it is more heartbreaking to discover that people have a tendency toward repeating the tragedy. After visiting Auschwitz, Schindler’s Factory and the POLIN museum, we feel that it is our responsibility to prevent such an abhorrent maltreatment of a certain people from ever happening again.