Digital reconstruction of Warsaw after the 1944 uprising
 

Amazing work...the video is truly amazing.

http://www.behance.net/gallery/City-of-Ruins/4066411

Words cannot describe...

Fine, but wouldn't it be more of help for the present if you do such a project to depict the damage done in Tel Aviv after the impact of an MRBM, or Frankfurt after a dirty suitcase bomb went up, or the London Underground scenery after a tunnel or station got attacked with mustard gas?

I'm getting a bit tired of always seeing monuments and docus for a war long gone by, while more imminent threats lie directly on our doorsteps right now.

Especially WWII is sometimes dripping out of my ears, that much of it got filled into me since 5th class at school 34 years ago.

Would be a bit hard to do since none of those have actually happened Sky. :hmmm:

World War II is saturated, yes, but the Warsaw Uprising is often overlooked in parts west of Germany. Very often.

Then do some reasonable assumptions, calculations, and estimations on basis of past real-world tests.

Putting that into a visible image maybe would help in that it stays like that: that these things not only have not happened, but also will not happen. We are very easy these days in just ignoring these very realistic possibilities, and softening up our policies and making unrealistic assumptions. What makes these things more likely. Monuments for WWII do not help us in preventing them. And we cannot expect the now young that a long forgotten war still is as present for them and still has the same meaning for them as it has for those who had lived at that time.

I have criticised the cult about the Auschwitz remembrance for the same reason. People sit and eat beside the entrance to the compound. And they will drink a coffee with milk and sugar while watching that digital video about Warsaw. And they will find it an exciting evening spend at the cinemas next time a warmovie is shown.

We are so fixiated on staring back into history that we miss to prevent new calamities being done in the present. WWII we could not have prevented, none of us, we all are too young. The genocide in Darfhur for example is something that takes place during our lives. That we could have tried to influence for the better. (Just an example).

Just for Skybird, here's the full movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3zLK...ature=youtu.be

Yeah thats whats needed, a virtual museum of fictional events depicting a history of made up stuff.

But don't mention the warhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1K0k...feature=relmfu

The problem comes when people forget the lessons that should have been learnt after that war, and I think many people are forgetting now. I agree that a lot of people do focus on WWII, I personally think that it would be also good to have a similar thing on Ypres or down the front line. There was a film not so long ago that featured a film taken from an airship which flew across many of the old battlefields in 1919 when the devastation was still quite fresh. It was rather chilling to view.
In two years time it will be a hundred years since that war began, and despite our annual remembrance event I wonder how many people outside of historians and those interested in the era actually pay it much attention.
There's a reason that there are more museums for the First and Second World Wars than there is for the Korean war or Falklands war, and that's the sheer size and scope of them.

Should there be a 'Danger Muslims Ahead' museum? Perhaps, but would it do anything other than encourage people to kill each other more? No, not really.

I've found this pretty interesting.

It should be done for more cities IMHO, Dresden, London, Tokyo. I mean, I can see part of Skybirds point in that it's like violence in general these days in which we have been overexposed to it and it no longer contains the shock value it once did. However, it is my hope that as the technology to create virtual environs that feel and smell real advances then we will be able to recreate the horror that our ancestors went through so that those of today understand why it is that violence isn't the answer.

Considering human nature as it stands though, I fully expect that in the next century there will be a museum to the holocaust of the twenty first century...whomever it shall be.

Agree completely. You hear about the Uprising and that the city was destroyed and it's kind of this vague or abstract concept. But it forces you to stop and think about that. The. city. was. destroyed. The sheer amount of armament that was used to level an entire city is just...wow. It brings it home in a real way.

The scenes in the movie "The Pianist" where the main character is in the ruins of the city were truly startling, especially because you realise that such a level of destruction actually happened. I have always been in awe of the determination of the Polish people throughout history to fight and persevere and survive against forces much stronger than they could muster. Many may make"polish jokes" about the citizens of that country, but one thing cannot be denied: they are among the most courageous, fearless, and dedicated to their freedoms of all the people in the world...

...

But how does one respond to violence like that which destroyed Warsaw if not with more violence?

"Turn the other cheek" is a fine Christian value but it usually just invites a second slap.

Break the slapping hand though and it slaps no more...

Villager: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth!
Tevye: Very good. That way the whole world will be blind and toothless.

A fascinating movie Mark and a reminder of the atrocities that were committed to a cities inhabitants and its infrastructure.

Would probably have been surpassed had the Japanese mainland been invaded.

This is true, and it is a sad fact of life that violence like that will always continue, and the only way to contain it without submission is through violence. An eye for an eye making the whole world blind. We all wish for a day when all wars will end, but even our most destructive weapons cannot bring about peace on earth because they cannot change human nature.
We're better than we were a thousand years ago, but we've still got a long way to go.

Tell me about it. I got beat up in school because I was a pacifist and the beatings stopped when I broked someones glasses and a tooth. My dad thrashed me at home but not as much as I thrashed the other guy :D

Very impressive and very good work fom a technical pov.
I find it especially impressive if you compare it with air footage of German cities in 1945, as for example the ones shot during the trolley missions, some pics can be seen here: http://thebigfoto.com/world-war-2-trolley-missions
This puts the whole thing into dimension. The damage done to Warsaw in 2 months looks at least equal if not more to the damage done by years of bomb raids to Cologne - one of the major cities with the most structural damage.


I had a cola with ice during the clip, no coffee for me, thanks.
So who is the authority to tell how things should be remembered? Do the people who starved to death in the KLs gain something if you don't eat there? Are the people who dance Auschwitz impious?

Everyone who wants to remember can do it their own way. There might even be some people who think some silly stones in Berlin can help the memory - though I never met a single one.

Thinking about events from history does also not mean to have no awareness of today's atrocities. For example the Holocaust Museum in Washington has its own exhibition about Darfur and other contemporary genocides like Bosnia and Rwanda.

A good question. The cynical answer is: "the guy with the money." Unfortunate reality of memory organisations.

I would hope so. But the danger in history is getting too fixated to it. And another is the perspective getting smaller and smaller, while the illusion of knowing a lot gets bigger and bigger. Suddenly it's not history anymore: it's World War 2. Then it's not World War 2 anymore: it's one single event. And while I, as an aspiring historian, am all for studying one thing thorougly instead of being a walking Wikipedia, I'm still afraid it can in some cases create tunnel vision. I'm hardly immune to it myself.

[cyn mode]
Maybe one day we have a big rainbow colored apple statue standing in Auschwitz - the i-memorial :-?
[/cyn mode]

However I wanted to put more an emphasis on the individual side of remembrance in my previous post. Just like people grief differently. For example some people may think it is distateful to pour a beer on a buddy's grave or come to a funeral in colorful clothes, while this is my thing to do.
Anyone has it's own way to deal with memories, there is nothing better or more serious, thus nothing to judge.

And just like grief is only real when it's done voluntary, a top-down remembrance works only to a certain point and this is what makes some people fed up with "remembrance culture".
People can stand on a memorial site in fancy clothes with empty heads, thinking about J-Lo's ass while another person may just watch a little clip in the net and has some thoughts about the past and/or gets interested in it.