cell door and lock from Pawiak

Perhaps the most eery is the still evident scratchings in the walls made by prisoners, some reading "Jezus," the symbol of the Warsaw Uprising and resistance, prayers, and much more

There are peep holes in the doors through which the Gestapo would shoot at the prisoners. You can still see the holes dug into the walls by the bullets.

Prisoners would be dragged down this hall to their execution. It is now closed off.

View from the warden's office window.

There was an official name for this kind of cell (that I can't remember), in which prisoners would await for very long periods of time their torture and interrogations

 Going a bit out of "contextual order," one might say, I rode the bus out (over an hour long journey) to Palmiry Forest. It is the site of dozens of mass executions and mass burials, after the Nazis would transport people of the resistance, or political prisoners, or simply Warsaw citizens to the forests, blind fold them, and execute them, burying them in pits, attempting to keep it a secret. What I didn't realize was that the forest was also host to many Polish resistance forces not only during the second world war, but also even earlier, against Russian occupying forces at the end of the 19th century.

Many graves are still left unidentified, as far as I could tell.

This man won a gold medal at the Los Angeles Olympics. He was also a resistance member

I recall this man being a prominent figure in the resistance, and as his marker states, he was executed in Palmiry

There are various artifacts in the museum that are quite unusual due the nature of being so embedded in the forest

I never found a clear description of these encased young trees, but I did read that the Germans would plant young trees over the mass graves in attempts to disguise the locations. I think perhaps these several (maybe 3 or 4) trees were representative of particular locations of executions. Each had a plaque with names that I think were cities.

 I then went to the final museum, Pawiak, which is housed in the basement remains of the formerly enormous prison, which housed prisoners of the resistance, intelligentsia, and so on as I mentioned before. It's difficult to say who was sent here in a sentence, because a great many of them were accused of conspiracy, attempts on the lives of German soldiers, etc., when really it was often made up by the Germans, and ordinary citizens would be sentenced without real cause. Pawiak was "home" to prisoners, who would be sent and sometimes return from, torture and interrogation at Szucha street. Also at Pawiak, prisoners were hung, shot, and tortured. There is one picture that was taken in secret of one such hanging, and after visiting all three museums, I can say I saw it the most frequently. If you simply Google "Pawiak" you will see the photo. The reason not much remains is because the Germans destroyed the prison as they retreated from the city.





This (below) is a bronze reconstruction of an oak tree that died about 20 years ago. Up until that point, it had been the only remaining "witness" to what went on in the prison. Pope John Paul II stopped here on his pilgrimage to Poland after becoming Pope in the 1980s. As seen above, the plates contain the names of former prisoners.





 So you can see how the three are connected. Pawiak housed the prisoners, who would be sent to Szucha for torture and interrogation. From either of those places, prisoners were sent to mass executions in the Palmiry Forest.