Very interesting pictures. Most photographs I have seen have been taken in black and white, and show the destroyed city in 1944/'45.<p>My family had many tragic memories of the ruins of Warsaw, for they were bound with the jewish ghetto uprising and the following uprising by the AK (armia krajowa, underround army).<p>On another note, many cities still show signs of the destructive effect on war on the jewels of our civilizaton: The battle for Berlin also had a great toll on the city and its inhabitants, and the battle for Stalingrad (Wolgograd) had the worst effect on the population of the city: just left a single, half destroyed house and very few survivors were left. But many more civilian deaths and destruction of settlement took place during the war - the fires of Hamburg and Dresden, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Blitz on english cities are well known, but the destruction of smaller settlements and villages are not mentioned that often.<p>These were terrible days. We should be thankful for the peace we have.
I apologize for being nit-picky here, but please upload it somewhere other than Facebook. (It's just a personal policy to not visit Facebook and give them any data about me, and I'm sure there are others like me here).
Building from the first picture, The Prudential[0], looks pretty much the same right now[1]. I don't know if the actual renovation started already or not but hopefully it'll be turned into this[2].<p>[0]<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prudential,_Warsaw" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prudential,_Warsaw</a><p>[1]<a href="https://maps.google.pl/maps?q=mapa+warszawa&ll=52.235936,21.012814&spn=0.001873,0.004699&hnear=Warszawa,+mazowieckie&gl=pl&t=m&z=19&layer=c&cbll=52.236068,21.012911&panoid=V3KNU37Kbhr7NW-MWRExzg&cbp=12,202.96,,0,-31.5" rel="nofollow">https://maps.google.pl/maps?q=mapa+warszawa&ll=52.235936,21....</a><p>[2]<a href="http://www.bimarch.pl/cmsArchitectPortfolio/renderShow/id/6" rel="nofollow">http://www.bimarch.pl/cmsArchitectPortfolio/renderShow/id/6</a><p>Edit: wording.<p>Edit2: I just remembered there is a movie showing Warsaw in 1935[3] and another one when city was destroyed in 1939[4]. I encourage you to visit Warsaw Rising Museum if you ever have a chance.<p>[3]<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5ea_396LPo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5ea_396LPo</a><p>[4]<a href="http://www.miastoruin.pl/index_en.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.miastoruin.pl/index_en.html</a>
All these flat areas covered in rubble hills used to be housing estates (usually 5-6 stories high) in the Warsaw Ghetto. It was blown up, bulldozed, razed to the ground. As you may see, other parts of the city survived in a slightly better state.<p>Born and raised in Warsaw I sometimes feel I'm literally walking on history. There are hundreds of commemorative plaques/stones everywhere you go in the downtown and neighbouring districts.
Pictures like this one: <a href="http://pokazywarka.pl/hi4dlh/#zdjecie2341024" rel="nofollow">http://pokazywarka.pl/hi4dlh/#zdjecie2341024</a>
It was a densely populated area before war.
On top of that over 200,000 children were kidnapped from Poland during WWII, most of which never returned:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_children_by_Nazi_Germany" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_children_by_Nazi_...</a>
For comparison, the same city in 1935: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5ea_396LPo" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5ea_396LPo</a>
The Warsaw Uprising Museum commissioned a computer simulation of the destruction of the city, visualized as a view from an airplane flying over. It's another way to see the scale of destruction.<p>Article and trailer:
<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/28/simulation-warsaw-second-world-war" rel="nofollow">http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/28/simulation-wars...</a><p>Film: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH7UOB5hGHg" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH7UOB5hGHg</a>
Slightly improved translation over the google translate version:<p>In the summer of 1947 a group of American designers visited England, Czechoslovakia and Poland, in order to assess the post-war reconstruction progress. The photos are from their visit in August in Warsaw. The Group extended their visit to Warsaw by a few days to meet with the architects from the Capital Office of Reconstruction and reported that their work commands respect.
Google Earth has historic aerial imagery of Warsaw for 1935 and December 1945. This helps to adds some sense of scale to the images of the destruction taken on the ground and enables direct comparison to the current city layout.<p><a href="http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/02/spotlight-on-historical-imagery-warsaw.html" rel="nofollow">http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/02/spotlight-on-hist...</a>
Interesting how many buildings were clearly hit by bombs, burned out and still didn't collapse into their own footprint as tall buildings are known to do.
The nazi lesson is more important in the face of processes which happens today, on our eyes in Poland, in Baltic states and Ukrane (do you know that Nazi penetrate the official power in Ukrane, what would western countires do if somebody seized the official buildings or even attacked a policeman?).<p>Today, Polish nazi do destroy the monument of the soviet solders, who liberated them,
<a href="http://ru-facts.com/news/view/31587.html" rel="nofollow">http://ru-facts.com/news/view/31587.html</a><p>They do it on the formerly Deutsch land, that was generously gifted to the polish people by "the bloody dictator, Stailn", after Polish nationalists have siezed the western part of Soviet Union in 1920 and collaborated with Hitler to start WWII attacking the Checkoslovakia USSR allies in 1938.<p>The burgeose-democratic Poland does not deserve being an independent country. Independent, it turns immediately into a nazi regime. Nazi hate Russians, hate communism. The modern Poland is a nazi country, as usually (american, capitalist puppet. Capitalists do raise the nazi to defend the capitalism from communists, not only in Poland but everywhere in the Europe and the Latin America also).