Correction appended
As a study abroad student, I was aware things were going to be different from home. But it has already become infinitely apparent how many of those differences I took for granted.
Arriving in Krakow, I was greeted by cobblestone streets, cars parked on sidewalks and hundreds of Polish signs I couldn't read. The tram system is run on an honor system, completely unlike D.C.'s Metro. Credit cards are rarely accepted, and most stores close down completely on Sundays.
Adjusting to all of those things, at least temporarily, is part of the study abroad experience. But when members of my program, held at Jagiellonian University, took a study trip to Warsaw, Poland's capital, I saw a side of Poland almost impossible for me to comprehend.
I doubt many AU students have heard of the Warsaw Uprising. I admit, I had never heard of it until I arrived here. The uprising began on Aug. 1, 1944, when insurgent Poles seized several parts of the city from the occupying Germans until finally an agreement was signed to end the fighting on Oct. 2 that same year.
At that time, all military personnel and civilians were forced to leave the city. Soldiers were sent to POW camps. Civilians were ordered to temporary camps and later transferred to concentration camps or to Germany for forced labor in other Polish cities.
During the uprising, more than 18,000 insurgent troops and 180,000 civilians died.
On our study trip, we visited a memorial to the Warsaw Uprising and the Warsaw Uprising Museum. The museum created a room dedicated to the children involved in the uprising. In the room, one plaque described a boy who was given a medal of valor after dying at the age of 12 defending his city.
At the back of the room, a movie played, showing children who sang patriotically, "We will spill our blood for every stone."
So often, World War II is taught in U.S. schools as a war that barely existed before we entered, and one that we saved when we did. We forget the horrible fighting and the thousands of deaths that occurred long before we joined the effort.
And while we often claim how our country was absorbed in the war effort - planting victory gardens, collecting aluminum and knitting socks, among other things - our civilian involvement is almost laughable when faced with the reality of the Polish war effort.
At home, I routinely shrug off claims that we're lucky to be in the United States, but it's true. It's not about being able to use credit cards or having a CVS open 24 hours a day. We did not live through a war that destroyed our cities, wiped out our nation and forced children to arms. We did not have to memorialize child soldiers or the millions of civilians that died in concentration camps and extermination camps.
It is so easy to look around Poland and see relics of communist times - huge, characterless cement buildings now painted bright, sunny colors in an attempt to mask the history built into their very walls. But seeing pictures of the buildings they replaced, reduced to rubble in the fighting, lends an entirely new perspective.
In Warsaw, buildings gleam with the newness of many U.S. cities, but they do so at a much higher price - a price that should be remembered not just here in Poland but around the world.
Correction: Krakow is mistakenly identified as the capital of Poland. Warsaw is the capital.
