The Warsaw Ghetto

Warsaw Ghetto wall

With our guide, Pawel, Kirsten and I toured several sites within the former Warsaw Ghetto in the old Jewish quarter of the city. The Warsaw Ghetto is an iconic place for me. I find it both fascinating and profoundly sad. It represents the worst of human nature as shown by those who created and carried out the war and the best of humanity by those with the courage, resilience, and dignity of the people who endured unimaginable suffering there.

The ghetto, decreed by the Nazis in 1940, forced 380,000 Jewish residents of Warsaw and nearby towns into a 1.3 square mile area in central Warsaw. Starting in 1941, smaller numbers of Jews from Germany and other German-occupied western Polish territories were transported to Warsaw increasing the ghetto population up to 450,000 before being murdered or deported to Treblinka and other death camps.

The Warsaw Ghetto is renowned as the largest ghetto in Europe during WW2. Enclosed by a wall that was over 10 feet high and topped with barbed wire, it was closely guarded by the Nazis to prevent people from going between the ghetto and the rest of Warsaw. After the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943, the ghetto was destroyed by the Nazis as a deliberate act of extermination and punishment. Only a few remnants of the wall remain today.

A Tour of the Ghetto

Umschlagplatz memorial

On our tour of the Warsaw Ghetto, we traced the Memorial Route of Jewish Martyrdom and Struggle, a symbolic path that begins at the Ghetto Heroes Monument on the grounds of the Polin Museum and leads to the Umschlagplatz, the tragic rail stop where more than 300,000 Jews were sent to the Treblinka death camp. The white marble memorial there lists names and gives the impression of an open railroad-car loading area.

Historic street signs of Prozna Street

Grzybowski Square anchors the historic Jewish quarter and once formed part of the Warsaw Ghetto. At the time, small shops surrounded an open air market. Bordering Grzybowski is Prozna Street, the only street from the ghetto where a few prewar buildings have survived and some have been renovated.

Chlodna Street bridge photo (lower left)

A little more than a kilometer away from Prozna Street is Chlodna Street. In early 1940, the ghetto was divided along Chlodna Street, which is one of the city’s major thoroughfares.  The area southeast of Chlodna was known as the "Small Ghetto," while the area north of it became known as the "Large Ghetto." The street itself was excluded from the ghetto. The two parts of the ghetto were connected at an intersection of Chlodna and Zelazna Street, where a special gate was built. 

In January 1942, the gate was removed and a wooden footbridge was built over the street. The bridge was also known as the “"Bridge of Sighs" by the ghetto inhabitants since people on it could look over into the "Aryan" side of Warsaw that was closed off to them. An art installation was completed in 2011 forming an outline the footbridge and is lit up at night.

Muranow, another neighborhood in Warsaw, was mostly inhabited by Jewish people until 1940 when it was enclosed as part of the ghetto. It was destroyed after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. Soon after the war, the Muranow housing project, known as the “modern garden city,” was built on top of the ruins, using crushed rubble from the destroyed buildings to create new bricks. That has not erased the memory of its bloody past, however.

A short walk away from Muranow is Mila 18, the site of the headquarters and hidden shelter of the Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB), a resistance organization that led the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. A memorial of the bunker has been built on the rubble of the building commemorating the commander, Mordechai Anielowicz, and the ghetto fighters entombed in the bunker. The names of 51 Jewish fighters are inscribed on it.

The Ringelblum Archive

Ringelbum Archive Memorial
on the site where it was found

I was looking forward to visiting the Ringelblum Archives at the Jewish Historical Institute. I’ve read about Ringelblum and watched the documentary, Who Will Write Our History. Emanuel Ringelblum was a Polish-Jewish historian, politician and social worker, who began documenting what life was like under Nazi occupation in October 1939. Once confined to the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, he organized a secret group to document day-to-day life in the ghetto. 

For roughly three and a half years, the group comprised of 50-60 Jewish scholars, educators, journalists, religious leaders, artists, and youth activists secretly met each Saturday in the ghetto using the code name Oyneg Shabes, meaning “the joy of the Sabbath.” While living in the ghetto, members of Oyneg Shabes buried more than 35,000 items in large metal milk cans and metal boxes, including diaries, testimonies, underground newspapers, artwork, ration cards, letters, children’s writings, photographs, and documents describing the destruction of ghettos in other parts of occupied Poland.

Milk cans and tin boxes of the Ringelblum Archive after excavation.
Photo by Unknown Author (1960)
via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.

Also included are copies of several underground newspapers, a description of deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto, and public notices by the Judenrat (the council of Jewish leaders), and documents of ordinary life, concert invitations, milk coupons, and chocolate wrappers. 

The group used the Jewish Social Self-Help (ZSS) organization that was tolerated by the Nazis as a cover for its activities. The office of this social service organization is now the Jewish Historical Institute, the permanent home of the Ringelblum Archives. Only three members of Oyneg Shabes survived the war and led to the recovery of the buried archives after the war. Two of the three caches were found buried underneath a public school building. The third cache has never been found.

I was intrigued by the order and organization of Oyneg Shabes by the way each member took responsibility for documenting a particular part of life in the ghetto. For example, Rachel Auerbach, a journalist, wrote about the experience of Jewish women and Rabbi Shimon Huberband wrote about religious life and traditional communities. They were dedicated to record for history, not only the terrible events, but also the everyday lives of the people who lived there. 

Although I haven’t seen documentation of my family members being sent to the Warsaw Ghetto from Lublin, as a Jewish woman, being there felt especially personal. I wasn't simply visiting another historical site. I was walking through a place that is part of the history where families lived, struggled, resisted and tried to maintain some sense of normal life in the face of unbearable circumstances.

I knew I would be moved by visiting the Warsaw Ghetto. Some places you visit and remember because of what you saw. Others stay with you because of what you felt. For me, the Warsaw Ghetto is one of those places.