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El Cangrejo used to be Panama City's most identifiably Jewish neighborhood. Many of its Jewish residents and most of its Jewish institutions moved out long ago, but between Colegio La Salle and Panasonic the street is still called Via de Los Combatientes del Gheto de Varsovia. Where that street ends at the Transistmica there is this monument to the men, women and children of the Warsaw Ghetto who, fighting desperately with hardly any weapons, held off the mighty German army for nearly a month in April and May of 1943.

Heroism, like its opposite, is a part of human nature. It has no particular race, religion, nationality or political philosophy. Thus this historical monument, which on the face of it has nothing to do with Panama, stands as this country's recognition of something noble in the human spirit, a counterpoint to the facile, timid opportunism of which we see too much in our society.

The memory of the ferocious resistance led by the Jewish Fighting Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, or ZOB) and its commander Mordecai Anielewicz when, on the eve of Passover 1943, the SS stormtroopers came to deport the Warsaw Ghetto's remaining Jews to the death camps is not the sole property of the Jewish community. It is rather a benchmark against which all humanity measures its conduct in the face of the most severe crises.

Unfortunately, the hard-pressed municipal government lacks the funds to properly maintain the capital's many statues, plaques, monuments and historical markers. City hall looks to community groups to pitch in and perform that task, but unfortunately as the years go by the people who erect monuments to the better side of human nature die or move away, and the elements wreak havoc on unmaintained public art.

And so it is with Panama City's monument to the heroic combatants of the Warsaw Ghetto. The lamp in its center is loosely tilting to one side, its settings having rusted away. The statue's feet are crumbling. Give it a few more years of neglect and there won't be anything left.

This monument can be easily enough restored and maintained, if there is a will to do so.

Also in this section:
Journalist Anona Kirkland turns 100
Anona Kirkland Writing Contest awards
Warsaw Ghetto uprising monument crumbling
Voting absentee in the US elections

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