WARSAW (AFP) ― Nazi bombs left Warsaw as little more than a smouldering heap of rubble at the end of World War II.
Now, nearly seventy years later, the charm of the pre-war Polish capital dubbed the “Paris of the north” has been brought back to life for the first time thanks to a new film, using three-dimensional computer imaging.
Whether from the eye of an eagle soaring over the skyline, a pigeon flying down city streets, or passengers on a tram, “Warszawa 1935” invites viewers into the lush squares and parks of the city centre, a vanished world that very few still recall.
For Stefan Zoltowski, now 84, seeing “Warszawa 1935” rekindled memories he thought were long lost.
“It’s impressive. I saw part of the street on which I spent my childhood,” the retired physician who grew up on Zlota (gold) street in the heart of Warsaw told AFP.
The Nazis razed the apartment building belonging to his family to the ground during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.
Over 80 percent of Warsaw was destroyed by the Nazis, and more than 700,000 of its 1.3 million pre-war residents perished under German occupation between 1939-45.
Today, a shopping mall and the landmark Stalinist-era Palace of Culture built by the Soviet Union in socialist-realist style just after the war stand on the streets where Zoltowski once played with childhood friends.
The 237 meters high Palace of Culture is now flanked by parking lots, parks and capitalist-era sky-scrapers, which have transformed the city centre almost beyond recognition over the last two decades.
The new 3-D film which shows the city as it was before its destruction and subsequent communist and capitalist-era revamps, fills a deep yearning for “the Warsaw we miss” says Ryszard Maczewski, head of the Warszawa1939.pl foundation working to document the capital’s pre-war design.
