Warsaw's Royal Way,
a mostly buses-and-taxis-only shopping boulevard,
is a local favorite for strolling and browsing...
And ultimately leads you to Warsaw's historic old town.
The castle long served as a royal palace.
Sigismund III, the Great King who moved Poland's capital
from Kraków to Warsaw in 1596,
stands overseeing everything.
And the city's legendary mermaid welcomes friends
while keeping out foes.
The grand city of Warsaw experienced more than its share
of hardships in the 20th century.
As with the rest of Poland,
the real tragedies came with the Nazis and World War II.
During the Nazi occupation, there were two heroic uprisings.
First, the Jewish Ghetto Uprising;
then, about a year later, the entire city rose up
against the Nazis in the Warsaw Uprising.
Several powerful museums are dedicated to telling the story.
By the 1930s, Warsaw, with 350,000 Jews,
was one of the largest Jewish cities in the world.
The Nazis arrived in 1939.
They crammed Warsaw's Jews into a single neighborhood
and surrounded it with a wall.
As more Jewish people were moved in from the countryside,
Warsaw's ghetto was soon the miserable home
of well over a million people.
By 1942, half of the Jews in the ghetto
had died of disease or starvation.
The Nazis began moving people out at the rate of 5,000 a day
to nearby death camps like Auschwitz.
The population of the ghetto was down to about 60,000
when those who remained realized they would die
even if they did nothing.
They decided to stage a courageous uprising.
Hopelessly outgunned by the Nazis,
the uprising was crushed...
The ghetto was demolished...
And its residents were killed.
Because of the ferocity of Nazi hatred,
nothing remains of the ghetto except the street plan
and the heroic spirit of the people who once lived here.
Ghetto Heroes Square,
now surrounded by bland Soviet-style apartment blocks,
marks the heart of what was the Jewish ghetto.
The monument commemorates those who fought and died
for the dignity and freedom of the Jewish nation,
for a free Poland, and for the liberation of humankind.
About a year later,
the rest of the city staged another ill-fated uprising,
the Warsaw Uprising.
By 1944, as the Soviet army drew near, it was becoming clear
the Nazis' days in Warsaw were numbered.
With the expectation of help from Soviet tanks
which were gathering just across the river,
it seemed like the right time to attack.
This monument recalls
the 50,000 Polish resistance fighters,
the biggest underground army in military history, who
launched a surprise attack on their Nazi oppressors.
They poured out at the sewers and caught the Nazis off-guard,
initially having great success.
It was rifles, knives and molotov cocktails
against air force, tanks and artillery
as they battled courageously for 63 days.
But the Nazis regrouped
and brutally put down the Warsaw Uprising.
A quarter of a million poles were killed.
Through all this, the Soviets sat here, across the river.
They watched and waited.
As the smoke cleared and the Nazis retreated,
the red army marched in
and claimed the pile of rubble that was once Warsaw.
To me, the thriving city itself
is the best memorial to those Warsaw heroes.
Today, as you explore, it's hard to imagine that by 1945,
nearly two-thirds of the city's prewar population was dead
and not a building was standing in Warsaw's old town.
Virtually everything you see is rebuilt.
Before the war, Warsaw's old town square
was one of the most happening spots in central Europe.
And today, even the higgledy-piggledy charm
of the buildings has been painstakingly restored.
The colorful architecture reminds
locals and tourists alike
of the prewar glory of the Polish capital.