Walking Through The City And Learning History

Another walk around the city, another presentation of a piece of the old city center. Every time the urge brings me to the city center I can't stop myself from photographing as much as possible around me out of a selfless desire to show others a lesser-known place in this part of Eastern Europe.

I mean Bucharest, which is the capital of Romania, I mean the place where I live my life.

Although we are about to skip the end of winter and start enjoying spring, the season of nature's rebirth, I am going to tell you about a walk I took at the end of autumn.

The city of Bucharest, like most cities in this world, is crossed by a river. This river is a small one, not navigable, and, unfortunately, it was arranged during the communist period of Romania in such a way that it resembles a canal.

So far, the city hall and the architects have not managed to modify, i.e. to modernize this place, it remains with the shape and accessories of the last century, the 1980s when this area was systematized in order to build a new city center, called the civic center.

I remember working on the lampposts myself. In the pole factory, in the metal pole workshop, I made the poles and lamps, which were not ugly at all, on the contrary. I can't imagine how the architects and designers managed to design lamps with a retro, early twentieth-century look!

In this central area of the city, an entire neighborhood, called Uranus, was demolished to build this civic center, following a North Korean model. The then dictator of Romania, now deceased, Nicolae Ceausescu, visited the ultra-communist capital of North Korea, Pyongyang, and was impressed by the new architecture there. Since he didn't have much brains and culture but had a belief in totalitarian Stalinist-style totalitarian power, he decided to build something grander than he had seen. That's why he destroyed a neighborhood full of history and old architecture, to build tall and similar blocks, a big boulevard, and, above all, the People's House, the biggest administrative building in the world. In the end, this building remained the second largest in the world, the dictator never saw it finished because he took a walk in front of the firing squad in 1989 and the People's House became the Parliament of the democratic country Romania.

A small country with a small economy, like Romania, should not even try to build something like this. It is incomprehensible. And yet, it was built with an effort that lowered the standard of living in the country a lot. It now houses the Romanian parliament... and rightly so, because most of Romania's parliamentarians are either descendants of the communists or just sympathize with the old days. Even more, the Romanian Orthodox Church has joined in and started building a huge cathedral, even taller than the parliament! In a country always at the bottom of the list of countries in the European Union, in all chapters!

It must be a curse!

But let's go further along the river... unfortunately no one walks on the waterways. I don't know why, something is missing. Fortunately, there was a mayor who planted a lot of plane trees in Bucharest. Many can be seen by the river and are the most beautiful part of the place. In years to come they will certainly be impressive.

Walking along the riverside I approached the part of the city I like the most, namely Victory Avenue.

Here's a little market I'm heading for. I say goodbye to the Dambovita river because it will no longer appear in today's story!

In this small square, we can see buildings from several historical periods, some built at the beginning of the last century, others in the middle of the century and the tallest building is the newest and most modern building in the area, built after 2000.

Something other than buildings is to be seen here. A strange building, which looks like an unfinished block foundation and a tall rusty iron pillar.

The Memorial Column or Column of Memories is 17 m high and 1.50 m thick.

There is a museum here, the Holocaust Memorial, dedicated to the memory of the Jews exterminated during the Nazi period.

The Holocaust Memorial is a monument in Bucharest, inaugurated on 8 October 2009.
Holocaust Memorial Day Romania, established on 9 October, commemorates the more than 250,000 Jews who died as a result of their deportation to Transnistria in 1941.

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The museum resembles a buried bunker, surrounded by iron walls. A wide staircase provides access to the museum entrance.

On the side walls, there are some rooms with tombstones from Jewish cemeteries...

These are gravestones brought both from Transnistria and from the oldest Jewish cemetery in Bucharest (late 17th century), which was expropriated and destroyed by order of Ion Antonescu, Prime Minister of Romania, between 1942 and 1944. To top it all off, the Jews were forced to work to demolish and relocate the cemetery.

The winner of the competition to create this museum is a Romanian-born sculptor, photographer, and visual artist from Germany, Peter Jacobi.

The central hall of the memorial is a large, empty room with rusty tin plaques on the walls at eye level, inscribed with the names of Holocaust victims by cut-outs.

Any museum's main objective is to show something, anything, from art to ... anything. To show and inform, visitors to learn something from the exhibits. This museum teaches us history. It's a history of my country that I didn't know, I didn't learn in school. I learned something very sad and shameful about my country. To make you understand what it's all about, I translate here what it says on the plaque at the entrance of the museum.

The Holocaust in Romania, 1940-1944. While Nazi Germany, its allies, and collaborators were implementing the plans to destroy the European Jews (which will be known as the Holocaust or Shoah), the Romanian state unleashed its own systematic persecution of the Jews, which was anticipated by the anti-Semitic legislation of 1940. The pogroms in Dorohoi and Galați, from June 1940, those in Bucharest from January 1941, and Iași from June 1941, left behind thousands of dead and marked the beginning of the organized destruction of Romanian Jews. In October 1941, the regime of Ion Antonescu began the deportation of Jews from Bessarabia and Bucovina to Transnistria, triggering the genocide with the aim of eliminating the country's Jewish population. Between 1940-1944, the Romanian state was responsible for the death of at least 280,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews. Twenty-five thousand Romany people were also deported to Transnistria, where 11,000 perished. In the spring of 1944, the Hungarian occupation authorities from the northwestern regions of Romania deported 135,000 Transylvanian Jews to Auschwitz where they were killed by the Germans. The Romanian nation and its government erected this memorial as a permanent place of remembrance and as a warning to future generations.
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On the plateau next to the bunker there are several signs and symbols that I found out about by searching on the internet because at the museum I couldn't find anyone or a guide to give me more information. Although I didn't identify all these items during my walk, I am putting some photos of some of these exhibits and will make another visit to understand them better.

The Star of David is a symbol of religion and the Jewish people.
The wheel is reminiscent of the Indian heritage of the Romany people.
The freight wagons in which the Jews were transported to the camps.

This was the Holocaust Museum of Romania. A museum was established with the aim of informing about facts of the past hidden until now and because "The Romanian nation and its government erected this memorial as a permanent place of remembrance and as a warning to future generations".

I left deeply impressed by what I saw in this museum. I felt sent back to the dark past of the Nazi era in Europe. Fortunately, those times are long gone but what happened then can happen again anytime. The role of this museum is to remind people about the crimes of the past. Unfortunately, as we have often seen, people are quick to forget and repeat their mistakes!

For now, just a few steps away from this gloomy museum, city life is busy and pleasant.

This little street leads to Victory Avenue, my favorite street in the city.

The Victory Avenue. Next time...

I have written many times about the city where I live. Each time I have tried to point out some places that may be of interest to some visitors. At the same time, I try to discover for myself places that maybe I don't know enough about, that are worth and should be seen more.

But in the end, it was a walk around the city, it was a described walk, and for #wednesdaywalk, this challenge proposed by @tattoodjay!

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