Saturday, September 5, 2015

Drought in Poland Reveals World War II Artifacts in River

BY STAV ZIV 8/28/15 AT 4:45 PM

The

receding water levels of the

Vistula River in Poland

this summer have revealed remnants of

Jewish tombstones as well as a

Soviet fighter plane from World War II with remains of its crew inside, the Associated Press reported.

A drought

has brought the country’s longest and largest river to record-low levels.

When the water drops in places to a height of 20 inches,

compared to its usual level of roughly 6.5 feet,

as it did this August,

objects that have been languishing on the riverbed for decades—and sometimes centuries—reveal themselves.

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"The

Vistula River is hiding no end of secrets.

They are everywhere," Jonny Daniels,

the founder and executive director of Jewish foundation

From the Depths

(which has offices in the U.S., U.K., Israel and Poland), told the AP.

Pieces of the

Soviet bomber that were found in a Vistula tributary near the village of Kamion are being examined at the nearby

Vistula River Museum in Wyszogród.

So far,

the museum has found fragments of

Soviet uniforms,

a parachute,

a sheepskin coat collar,

parts of boots, a pilot's pistol, radio equipment, and heavy ammunition in the plane, said museum director Zdzislaw Leszczynski.

"For now we have managed to find the

instrument panel, the engine, a wheel and a well-preserved radio set," he said, according to BBC News,

although “the plane was so battered that it's impossible to determine which model it is for the time being.”

However,

based on the winter uniforms and markings on the plane, Leszczynski said it was likely the plane crashed into the river in

January 1945,

when the German army was retreating westward.

There are plans formore work Saturday to continue recovering the wreckage from the riverbed.

Less than an

hour and a half’s drive away,

in the capital city of Warsaw,

another reminder of World War II emerged from the Vistula—

remnants of Jewish

tombstones

engraved with Hebrew letters.

According to the AP,

their origin is believed to be the

Brodno cemetery,

which today houses only 1 percent of the 300,000 tombstones it contained before the war after the cemetery was

pillaged by the

Nazis during the war and the Soviets afterward,

both of whom apparently used the headstones for building materials.

As Daniels implied,

this is not the first time the Vistula has brought forth historical artifacts. Just last week, the AP reported that

Warsaw authorities were promoting an effort to clean up garbage and recover pieces from

two bridges that once spanned the river:

the 18th century wooden Poninski Bridge, which was destroyed soon after the turn of that century,

and the early 20th century Poniatowski Bridge, part of which was blown up by the Nazis in 1944.

Warsaw’s official tourism site says that when the Poniatowski Bridge was reconstructed after the war,

its “stone benches were not replaced—you can see the original pieces, which are still at the bottom of the river, during low tide.”

Pieces of

Jewish gravestones were also found in the river in Warsaw in 2012, when water levels reached a then-record low.

That same year, the relatively empty river also revealed large pieces of elaborately carved marble

believed to have been looted from Polish rulers by Swedish invaders in the 17th century.

"The drought helped us a

lot because what had been lying underneath is now at the surface," Hubert Kowalski, deputy director of the University of Warsaw Museum, said at the time. "Now we have evidence,

the best material evidence of the Swedish invasion so far."

Though it’s not a surprise that such objects are hidden in the banks of the river, the task of locating and

recovering them is challenging under normal conditions and in particular when the river is so full it comes close to overflowing (like in 2005 and 2014).

Abnormally high temperatures

over the last several weeks and low rainfall in Poland have combined to bring about a drought which has caused

barges and tour boats to stall in the shallow waters of the Vistula and some farmers to lose their crops.

The weather also burdened the country’s power grid since the use of fans was high and the river—which power stations use to cool their generators—could not do so properly. But it also has an archaeological and historical silver lining, allowing these artifacts to be discovered, retrieved and examined.

In the case of the Soviet fighter plane found this week, the finding goes beyond preservational value. Russian Embassy spokeswoman Valeria Perzhinskayatold the AP that based on the markings on the debris, it’s possible the plane’s crew could be identified and properly buried. Similarly, Daniels says he hopes to return the remnants of Jewish gravestones to the cemetery.

Nazi

crimes against the Polish nation

claimed the lives of 2.77 million ethnic Poles,^[1]

and 2.7 to 2.9 million Polish Jews,

according to estimates of the Polish government-affiliated Institute of National Remembrance (IPN).^[1]

Historians outside Poland put the number of Jewish victims of the Holocaust in occupied Poland at 3.0 million.^[2]

The dissemination of knowledge on the subject of Nazi crimes in World War II was entrusted by an Act of the Polish Parliament in 2000 to the Institute,^[3]

which replaced the former Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes against the Polish Nation.^[4]^[5]