Dried riverbed reveals stolen architecture, unexploded artillery shells

When Sweden invaded Poland in the 17th century, the Swedes made off with pieces of marble lintels, columns, and other architectural details from the Polish royal palace.

Hundreds of years later, Nazis invaded Poland, carrying with them deadly, modern weaponry and a system of violent repression aimed at the country's Jewish population.

Now, thanks to a severe summer drought, evidence of both these invasions is turning up in Warsaw, beached on the dried riverbed of the Vistula.

Low rainfall over the past few months has brought the Vistula, Poland's longest river, to its lowest level since regular records began 200 years ago.Navigation along the river has already been affected and officials say if water levels do not recover soon, power stations in Warsaw that use river water for cooling may be forced to close down.

Unexploded World War Two ordnance was found on the river bed in one part of the city at the weekend. Kowalski said on the stretch of river bed he had been studying, a few pieces of Jewish matzevah, or gravestones, had been discovered.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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MORE: archaeology • drought • News • poland • Science

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Nazis invaded Poland, carrying with them deadly, modern weaponry and a system of violent repression aimed at the country’s Jewish population.
While Jews were attacked by the Nazis with particular malice, the whole Polish population was violently repressed.
- http://www.madziabryll.com Cefeida
  
  I was about to comment on this, thanks for pointing it out first. Three million Polish Jews were killed, but nearly six million Poles were killed in total.
  
  There was a particular aggression towards intellectuals and civilian leaders, as the Nazi plan was to turn the Poles into slaves. Stage one was an attempt to strip the population of its cultural identity, hence for example the banning of the Polish language, the intentional theft and destruction of monuments and objects of heritage (as opposed to the side-effects of an armed invasion), the mass incarceration of university professors, intellectuals and Catholic priests in concentration camps (prior to the imprisonment of Jews)…the list goes on.
http://www.madziabryll.com Cefeida

Pah, darnit, I guess when I submitterated a story last year about how a bridge blown up in ww2 had shown up for the first time since 44 due to low water in the river, it wasn’t cool enough news:P

Well, this IS much cooler. The Swedes lost a lot of ships in our rivers. >:)