The Streets

of the Archive

Photo courtesy Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw 

About

The Streets of the Archive is a multimedia project whose aim is to present the photographs from the Ringelblum Archive to a wider international audience. As part of the project, I have attempted to join the surviving traces of the Warsaw Ghetto with the surviving documentary records, thus drawing a map of the city which takes account of the overlapping layers of Warsaw’s history.

In 1999, the Ringelblum Archive was included in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. It is the only Jewish archive of any of the Nazi ghettos to have survived to the present day.

The Ringelblum Archive belongs to the extensive archives of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. It was discovered in the ashes of the Warsaw Ghetto, one part in 1946, the other in 1950. Its history dates back to 1940, when Emmanuel Ringelblum and his colleagues from Oneg Shabbatt decided to gather as much information about life in the ghetto as possible.

It is believed that Oneg Shabbat buried 300 photographs beneath the streets of the ghetto. Of these, 76 have survived. The Institute owns 61 of them, the rest are currently kept in a variety of archives scattered around the world. Scattered snippets of the ghetto life, a treasure of suffering, to use Georges Didi-Huberman’s words.

Explore the map below by hovering

Umschlagplatz

Umschlagplatz

The photo depicts members of the Judenrat on the Umschlagplatz. They are wearing armbands with the title “Umschlagplatzarbeiter” written on them. In 1942, from this square, the Germans transported hundreds of thousands of Jews to Treblinka.
Everyone who showed up on the Umschlagplatz received a loaf of bread for the journey. "They wouldn't waste bread on us,” people said. The ghetto food ration amounted to 600, sometimes 800 calories — for some, an extra bite was worth more than a human life.
On Stawki Street, a section of the Umschlagplatz’s wall still stands. It is surrounded by pebbles - symbols of remembrance.
Market Place on Miła Street

Market Place on Miła Street

Today, several housing estates are located in the vicinity of Miła Street, on both sides of Aleja Jana Pawła II – testimonies to the great reconstruction of Muranów.
During the Ghetto uprising, the bunker of one of its leaders, Mordechai Anielewicz, was located on Miła Street. On May 6, 1943, ten days before the end of the uprising, Anielewicz met up with Marek Edelman and his group on Franciszkańska Street to discuss their plan of action. But they were all too tired. And besides, there was nothing to talk about. So they went to sleep instead. The next day, Anielewicz insisted on returning to his bunker on Miła Street. Edelman and his group decided to escort him. The next day, they went once again to Miła Street. It was dark. They called out, but no one answered. A boy informed them that Anielewicz and the others had committed suicide.
In 1946, on the site of Anielewicz’s bunker, a mound was built from the rubble of Miła Street. It is known today as Anielewicz Mound. Close by, there is a monument. Its inscription reads: “Here they rest, buried as they fell, to remind us that the whole earth is their grave.”
Market Place on Miła Street

Market Place on Miła Street

Today, several housing estates are located in the vicinity of Miła Street, on both sides of Aleja Jana Pawła II – testimonies to the great reconstruction of Muranów.
During the Ghetto uprising, the bunker of one of its leaders, Mordechai Anielewicz, was located on Miła Street. On May 6, 1943, ten days before the end of the uprising, Anielewicz met up with Marek Edelman and his group on Franciszkańska Street to discuss their plan of action. But they were all too tired. And besides, there was nothing to talk about. So they went to sleep instead. The next day, Anielewicz insisted on returning to his bunker on Miła Street. Edelman and his group decided to escort him. The next day, they went once again to Miła Street. It was dark. They called out, but no one answered. A boy informed them that Anielewicz and the others had committed suicide.
In 1946, on the site of Anielewicz’s bunker, a mound was built from the rubble of Miła Street. It is known today as Anielewicz Mound. Close by, there is a monument. Its inscription reads: “Here they rest, buried as they fell, to remind us that the whole earth is their grave.”
Central Prison on Gęsia Street

Central Prison on Gęsia Street

Where the Central Detention Centre once stood, now there are blocks of flats. There’s also some greenery. And Oleg’s, the local deli, reliably stocked with sweets and sweetened drinks, less reliably with vegetables and bread. 
On a photograph taken nearby, a group of women are depicted holding loaves of bread. They have just been released from the Central Detention Centre thanks to the intervention of Adam Czerniaków, president of the Judenrat. 
As the women left the prison, each of them was given a loaf of bread. Inside, their daily calorie intake had varied from 400 to 500 calories. Outside, they were able to breathe in the fresh air, having spent days and weeks in overcrowded cells. Soon after the closing of the ghetto, cells suitable for 20 prisoners had held around 100.
The photograph is entitled Women Hungrily Eating Bread Issued from a Food Storage Facility. Many of the Ghetto's residents were never given the chance to hold such loaves in their hands.
Lubeckiego Street

Lubeckiego Street

Lubeckiego Street was one of the subjects of Heinrich Jost’s 1941 photo reportage.
Jost was a German Wermacht sergeant who on 19 September 1941 was celebrating his 43rd birthday. Before meeting with his colleagues at the Bristol Hotel (a luxurious establishment in the center of Warsaw, on the aryan side), he decided to visit the Ghetto.
While there, he photographed its busiest streets, as well as the Jewish cemetery. He documented the street trade - the primary focus of his 140-photograph reportage. He captured the Ghetto’s residents selling their possessions in order to buy vegetables and flour. And the starving children, begging for bread.
After his visit to the Ghetto, Jost cancelled his meeting at the Bristol. He developed his negatives in one of Warsaw’s photographic studios, and kept them by his side until the end of the war.
After 1945, he decided to hide them. Only in 1982 did he write to the German magazine “Stern,” asking if it would publish his photographs. As a result, Gunter Schwarberg, one of the editors of “Stern,” was able to conduct a number of interviews with Jost. But the editorial office was wary of publishing the photographs. Jost died in 1983, five years before his photographs were put on display in Jerusalem. Today, Heinrich Jost’s collection is available online, presented by a number of digital archives across the world.
Lubeckiego Street

Lubeckiego Street

Lubeckiego Street was one of the subjects of Heinrich Jost’s 1941 photo reportage.
Jost was a German Wermacht sergeant who on 19 September 1941 was celebrating his 43rd birthday. Before meeting with his colleagues at the Bristol Hotel (a luxurious establishment in the center of Warsaw, on the aryan side), he decided to visit the Ghetto.
While there, he photographed its busiest streets, as well as the Jewish cemetery. He documented the street trade - the primary focus of his 140-photograph reportage. He captured the Ghetto’s residents selling their possessions in order to buy vegetables and flour. And the starving children, begging for bread.
After his visit to the Ghetto, Jost cancelled his meeting at the Bristol. He developed his negatives in one of Warsaw’s photographic studios, and kept them by his side until the end of the war.
After 1945, he decided to hide them. Only in 1982 did he write to the German magazine “Stern,” asking if it would publish his photographs. As a result, Gunter Schwarberg, one of the editors of “Stern,” was able to conduct a number of interviews with Jost. But the editorial office was wary of publishing the photographs. Jost died in 1983, five years before his photographs were put on display in Jerusalem. Today, Heinrich Jost’s collection is available online, presented by a number of digital archives across the world.
Bonifraterska Street

Bonifraterska Street

Today, there are residential buildings, a stadium, and a grocery store on Bonifraterska Street. There is also the Church of John of God. During the war, there was a hospital next to the church.
It was located outside the Ghetto. It was intended for the military. At least that was what Karol Rotgeber was told when he tried to get himself admitted into it.
The hospitals in the Ghetto were overcrowded and dirty. Several patients often had to share a single bed. Many of them suffered from starvation, others from beating injuries or bullet wounds.

During the deportations of 1942, the hospitals in the Ghetto were successively shuttered. The last one to be closed was the hospital nearby the Umschlagplatz. When it became clear that it too was about to be liquidated, Adina Blady Szwajgier and Anna Margolis decided to give cyanide to its underage patients. Cyanide was considered a luxury good. Those who took it died painless deaths. Silent deaths
Ruins on Pańska, Twarda and Muranowska Streets

Ruins on Pańska, Twarda and Muranowska Streets

Despite the appalling conditions they had to contend with, many of the Ghetto’s residents were willing to provide assistance for family members living in other areas of Poland. The lists they prepared looked something like this:
1 dark blue dress
1 brown skirt
1 brown jacket
1 suit
3 shirts
1 nightgown
2 pairs of underwear
1 pair of soft boots
1 pair of brown shoes
1 pair of snow boots
1 pair of women's stockings
Hersz Wasser sent clothes to his relatives in Łódź from 6/15 Muranowska Street.
At present, there is a hotel on Muranowska Street, right next to the Polonia football stadium. Opposite the hotel – a monument to the Murdered in the East. By the Soviets.
Ruins on Pańska, Twarda and Muranowska Streets

Ruins on Pańska, Twarda or Muranowska Streets

Despite the appalling conditions they had to contend with, many of the Ghetto’s residents were willing to provide assistance for family members living in other areas of Poland. The lists they prepared looked something like this:
1 dark blue dress
1 brown skirt
1 brown jacket
1 suit
3 shirts
1 nightgown
2 pairs of underwear
1 pair of soft boots
1 pair of brown shoes
1 pair of snow boots
1 pair of women's stockings
Hersz Wasser sent clothes to his relatives in Łódź from 6/15 Muranowska Street.
At present, there is a hotel on Muranowska Street, right next to the Polonia football stadium. Opposite the hotel – a monument to the Murdered in the East. By the Soviets.
Przejazd Street

Przejazd Street

The building visible on the photograph beyond the wall of the Ghetto is the Mostowski Palace. Although only fifteen percent of the palace survived the war, today it is one of Muranów’s stateliest buildings. Zygmunt Stępiński and Mieczysław Kuźma were responsible for its 1949 reconstruction. During the period of communist rule in Poland, it functioned as the headquarters of the Citizens' Militia. At present, it is the headquarters of the Warsaw Metropolitan Police.
The section of the wall depicted in the photograph separated Przejazd Street (the Jewish side) from the Palace (the Aryan side). Przejazd Street was well-known as a major smuggling point. Heavily built up, it was rarely patrolled by the German gendarmes, and the nearest gate was several hundred meters away. Sacks of flour and other foodstuffs were thrown over the wall. Occasionally, smugglers would get shot while climbing over the walls. But this was a relatively rare occurrence, all things considered.
Przejazd Street

Przejazd Street

The building visible on the photograph beyond the wall of the Ghetto is the Mostowski Palace. Although only fifteen percent of the palace survived the war, today it is one of Muranów’s stateliest buildings. Zygmunt Stępiński and Mieczysław Kuźma were responsible for its 1949 reconstruction. During the period of communist rule in Poland, it functioned as the headquarters of the Citizens' Militia. At present, it is the headquarters of the Warsaw Metropolitan Police.
The section of the wall depicted in the photograph separated Przejazd Street (the Jewish side) from the Palace (the Aryan side). Przejazd Street was well-known as a major smuggling point. Heavily built up, it was rarely patrolled by the German gendarmes, and the nearest gate was several hundred meters away. Sacks of flour and other foodstuffs were thrown over the wall. Occasionally, smugglers would get shot while climbing over the walls. But this was a relatively rare occurrence, all things considered.
Karmelicka Street

Karmelicka Street

Karmelicka smelled of the ghetto: decomposing fish and decomposing corpses. It connected the Small Ghetto with the Large Ghetto to its north. The Small Ghetto was were the wealthier people lived – the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia. The two parts of the Ghetto were connected by wooden footbridges running over the streets.
Many memoirs describe Karmelicka as the Ghetto’s ghastliest street. Fish, crowds, corpses on the pavements, endless bartering. The Germans would often drive down it, shooting at people and beating them with batons. The teenage Janina Bauman used to walk down this street with Mietek, her lover. They would try to talk, despite the smell of the rotting corpses and fish.
Karmelicka Street

Karmelicka Street

Karmelicka smelled of the ghetto: decomposing fish and decomposing corpses. It connected the Small Ghetto with the Large Ghetto to its north. The Small Ghetto was were the wealthier people lived – the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia. The two parts of the Ghetto were connected by wooden footbridges running over the streets.
Many memoirs describe Karmelicka as the Ghetto’s ghastliest street. Fish, crowds, corpses on the pavements, endless bartering. The Germans would often drive down it, shooting at people and beating them with batons. The teenage Janina Bauman used to walk down this street with Mietek, her lover. They would try to talk, despite the smell of the rotting corpses and fish.
Borochow School Nowolipki

The Bar Borochow School at 68 Nowolipki Street

This is where the Ringelblum Archive was hidden. The first part was buried in the basement of the school on 3 August 1942, the second part in the beginning of February 1943.
In September 1946, the first part of the archive was discovered thanks to the efforts of surviving members of Oneg Shabbat – Rachela Auerbach, Hersz Wasser, and Bluma Wasser. Only Wasser knew where the archive had been hidden.
In December 1950, during the reconstruction of Nowolipki Street, the second part of the archive was found. A third part is rumoured to have been buried in a different location, on the site of the current Chinese embassy. It has not been found, and many researchers doubt its existence.
The archive contains several thousand documents (manuscripts, prints, and photographs), 28,000 pages in all. The majority of the documents found in the ruins of the building on Nowolipki Street were written in Yiddish and Polish; they were hidden in iron boxes and milk churns; among the documents were a number of drawings and paintings by Gela Seksztajn and Beniamin Rozenfeld, as well as a collection of photographs. A few years ago, the entire Archive was digitalised, so that all the documents are now available online, most of them in Polish and Yiddish. In addition to the written documents, 61 photographs can be found on the Jewish Historical Institute's website.
In 1999, the archive was included in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.
TOPOROL

TOPOROL -Skra Football Stadium

The Monument of the Common Martyrdom of Jews and Poles, designed by Tadeusz Szumielewicz and Marek Martens, is located on the site of the former Skra football stadium. Its simple granite tiles evoke the form of a sacrificial altar. On public holidays, a gas flame flickers on its crest. During the occupation, all sports were prohibited. The football stadium was used as an execution site.
For a time, the playing field was also used by TOPOROL - the Association for the Support of Agriculture. Cabbage, beetroot, and potatoes were grown there for aid organisations operating in the Ghetto. All of the Ghetto’s green areas were TOPOROL’s responsibility. In addition to growing vegetables, its members looked after flowerbeds, herbaria, and gardens for children. Greenery is important in cities. Even under occupation.
Gate to the Jewish Cemetery

Gate to the Jewish Cemetery

The Jewish cemetery survived the war. On the photograph, the building of the Funeral Home is visible beyond the gate of the cemetery. During the occupation, it was seldom in use. As a rule, the dead were gathered from the streets of the Ghetto and transported in carts to the cemetery. Occasionally, a rabbi would accompany them. As he sang his laments, the bodies were hastily buried in common graves.
The Germans were fond of making films. They documented the corpses scattered around the cemetery, the corpses lying in the morgues. To prove their respect for the dead, they also arranged some funeral scenes. For example: an old Jew over a young woman’s body.
Ogrodowa Street Jewish Police Quarters

Ogrodowa Street Jewish Police Quarters

The photo depicts a Jewish policeman at the headquarters of the Jewish Order Service on Ogrodowa Street. On the right, there is a statue of the Virgin Mary. (Our Lady of Grace, to be precise.) A similar statue can be seen today on Chłodna Street. No information has survived about the Mary on Ogrodowa Street. With open arms, the Virgin looks down at the earth. A crown of stars adorns her face. There is snow in the yard. It is 1941. Or 1942.
During the deportations to Treblinka, each Jewish policeman was required to bring five individuals to the Umschlagplatz every day. To ensure that they carried out their duty, the policemen's families were held as hostages.
A policeman let a Jewish photographer take his picture. Why? Jews were not allowed to take photographs in the Ghetto. Anyone who did was liable to severe punishment.
The photograph survived, hidden beneath the streets of the Ghetto.
Bridge on Chłodna

The Bridge above Chłodna

Close to the crossroads of Chłodna and Żelazna, four metal pillars rise up from either side of the street. These pillars commemorate a wooden bridge that stood there between January and August 1942. At night, a blue and white light shines down on the passers-by — the bridge’s outline, glowing in the dark.
The bridge connected the southern part of the ghetto, called the “Small Ghetto”, to the northern part – the “Large Ghetto.” From the top of the bridge you could see the Hale Mirowskie trade centre, the tower of the fire station, the Saxon Garden, the Cedergren tower on Zielna Street, the crosses Warsaw’s churches, and even the bank of the Vistula River. They called it the bridge of sighs: Ponte dei Sospiri. From its deck, you could see “the Aryan Warsaw, the ‘free’ Warsaw.” The footbridge was dismantled after Grossaktion Warsaw – the first phase of the liquidation of the ghetto.
Waliców and Krochmalna Streets

Waliców and Krochmalna Streets

"I am a scout,” I heard on my way to Krochmalna Street. “I’m responsible for a group of children. It’s different when you know the children you meet every week, whose names you know by heart”.
Krochmalna Street was just one of the places which witnessed the starvation of the ghetto. Grey-haired, thirty-year-old Rytka Urban, frenzied eyes embedded in her face, bit off the flesh of her twelve-year old son, having watched him die of hunger the day before. A few houses further up the road, at 14 Krochmalna Street, the corpse of a child, Moszek, was abandoned by Chudesa Borensztajn, Moszek’s mother. She confessed that she had left him there because she was expected to pay for the burial, and she didn’t have enough money. She then added that she was going to die soon too. Some of the names of the children who died on the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto have survived. Most have not.
Rickshaws on Chłodna and Żelazna Streets

Rickshaws on Chłodna and Żelazna Streets

Shortly before the closing of the Ghetto, Marek Edelman encountered a crowd on Żelazna Street, gathered around a barrel. An old Jew with a long beard was standing on the barrel. Two German officers were cutting off his beard with large pairs of tailor's scissors. The Germans were laughing. The crowd was laughing. No real harm was being done to the Jew. The entire scene looked like it belonged to a silent comedy. That's when Edelman realised that the most important thing of all was not to let anyone push you onto the barrel. Ever.
Chłodna Street

Chłodna Street

Traces of the tram tracks that used to run through Chłodna Street can still be discerned today. The tram was reserved for the residents of the Aryan side, and it passed through the Ghetto without stopping. There were long lines of rickshaws on Chłodna Street. One day, Janina Bauman and a boy called Mietek took a rickshaw from the “Large Ghetto” to the “Small” one. They were carrying a gramophone that they needed for a dance they were organising in the apartment of Mietek’s family. Janina Bauman did not feel comfortable taking the rickshaw – she felt it wasn’t fair towards the person who had to pull it. But it was prom night, their night. Mietek had bought a few old recordings from a man at the market. She was not prepared to dance in silence.
Chłodna Street

Chłodna Street

Traces of the tram tracks that used to run through Chłodna Street can still be discerned today. The tram was reserved for the residents of the Aryan side, and it passed through the Ghetto without stopping. There were long lines of rickshaws on Chłodna Street. One day, Janina Bauman and a boy called Mietek took a rickshaw from the “Large Ghetto” to the “Small” one. They were carrying a gramophone that they needed for a dance they were organising in the apartment of Mietek’s family. Janina Bauman did not feel comfortable taking the rickshaw – she felt it wasn’t fair towards the person who had to pull it. But it was prom night, their night. Mietek had bought a few old recordings from a man at the market. She was not prepared to dance in silence.
Żelazna Street

Żelazna Street

Whenever Otto Helmer was on duty, shots could be heard nearby the Żelazno-Leszno gate. The terror of the ghetto, Helmer was nicknamed Frankenstein. He relished inflicting pain – shooting at random pedestrians and punishing apprehended smugglers. A number of Jewish diaries contain stories of Frankenstein’s crimes. He was referred to as “the monster man,” “the angel of death,” “the blood hound,” “the beast.” People said he even looked like Frankenstein’s monster.
Nowadays, there are several restaurants and numerous residential buildings on Żelazna Street. Close by, there is also a pen repair shop. Traces of the Ghetto – a piece of wall – can still be seen on the street. There’s also a plaque commemorating the Warsaw Uprising. At one end of Żelazna, modern skyscrapers dominate the cityscape – signs of the Warsaw to come.
Żelazna Street

Żelazna Street

Whenever Otto Helmer was on duty, shots could be heard nearby the Żelazno-Leszno gate. The terror of the ghetto, Helmer was nicknamed Frankenstein. He relished inflicting pain – shooting at random pedestrians and punishing apprehended smugglers. A number of Jewish diaries contain stories of Frankenstein’s crimes. He was referred to as “the monster man,” “the angel of death,” “the blood hound,” “the beast.” People said he even looked like Frankenstein’s monster.
Nowadays, there are several restaurants and numerous residential buildings on Żelazna Street. Close by, there is also a pen repair shop. Traces of the Ghetto – a piece of wall – can still be seen on the street. There’s also a plaque commemorating the Warsaw Uprising. At one end of Żelazna, modern skyscrapers dominate the cityscape – signs of the Warsaw to come.
Grzybowski Square

Grzybowski Square

I look up at Warsaw’s sole surviving prewar synagogue. It’s Saturday, so it’s closed. Nonetheless, I can hear voices inside – preparations perhaps for the afternoon prayers. On the other side of the street – a church. It already stood there when the decision to build the synagogue was made. During the war, it was cut off from the city by the walls of the Ghetto. In the first week of December 1940, the church’s priest delivered a fiery sermon in support of the Ghetto’s Christian minority. He promised to take care of his parishioners, assuring them that he would organise a canteen for them and help them escape to the Aryan side. Many Jews convinced themselves that if they converted to Christianity, they would somehow survive the war.
When a Jewish Christian died, their relatives were not allowed to take part in their funeral, because Powązki Cemetery – the Catholic necropolis – was located beyond the Ghetto's walls. If any Jews were allowed to leave the Ghetto, it was not to mourn, but to work.
Judenrat Office Grzybowska Street

Judenrat Office Grzybowska Street

The photo depicts Adam Czerniaków, president of the Judenrat, amongst other Judenrat officials. On the evening of July 23 1942, the first day of the deportations to Treblinka, Czerniaków killed himself by taking a cyanide capsule in his office. In a note to his wife, he wrote: “They demand that I murder my nation’s children with my own two hands. I have nothing to live for.” Marek Edelman recalled that throughout the course of Grossaktion Warsaw – the mass deportations of the Ghetto’s residents to Treblinka – there was only one rainy day: July 23.
The German authorities ordered Czerniaków to prepare the Jewish population of Warsaw for “resettlement to the East.” He did everything he could to rescue Jewish orphans, but he was ultimately unsuccessful. Instead, he obtained exemptions for a different group of people: sanitation workers, the spouses of factory workers, and a number of students. The Jews who were permitted to remain in Warsaw were factory workers, hospital staff members, members of the Judenrat, and the Ghetto policemen along with their families. Between July and September 1942, nearly 300,000 people were deported, nearly all of whom died in Treblinka’s gas chambers.
Ciepła Street

Ciepła Street

It’s difficult to figure out where Ciepła Street once was. Has it moved since the war? Has the new shopping center taken its place? The Hale Mirowskie market place is nearby. A lot of noise, throngs of Christmas crowds – even bigger than usual.

On October 13, 1940, German gendarmes took away all the furniture from a tenement house on Ciepła Street, leaving the terrified residents with nothing. An orchestra was playing in the street. The Germans ordered a waltz to be played. They ordered the onlookers to dance. They made other people pay for the performance, both poor and rich. They grabbed a group of women and ordered them to undress. After delivering thirty blows each to their victims, they left.
Ciepła Street

Ciepła Street

It’s difficult to figure out where Ciepła Street once was. Has it moved since the war? Has the new shopping center taken its place? The Hale Mirowskie market place is nearby. A lot of noise, throngs of Christmas crowds – even bigger than usual.

On October 13, 1940, German gendarmes took away all the furniture from a tenement house on Ciepła Street, leaving the terrified residents with nothing. An orchestra was playing in the street. The Germans ordered a waltz to be played. They ordered the onlookers to dance. They made other people pay for the performance, both poor and rich. They grabbed a group of women and ordered them to undress. After delivering thirty blows each to their victims, they left.
Elektoralna Street

Elektoralna Street

One of the many apartments where illegal lessons were held for the Ghetto’s youth was located on Elektoralna Street. Many Jewish parents wanted their children to continue their education. They were able to find money for tutoring and school lessons conducted by pre-war teachers and older students.
Today, the cultural and economic life of Elektoralna Street is developing apace. Additionally, since the end of the war a modest housing estate has been built, along with the first of Warsaw’s so-called “millennials” (tysiąclatki) – schools-cum-monuments built for the thousandth anniversary of the Polish state.
Elektoralna Street

Elektoralna Street

One of the many apartments where illegal lessons were held for the Ghetto’s youth was located on Elektoralna Street. Many Jewish parents wanted their children to continue their education. They were able to find money for tutoring and school lessons conducted by pre-war teachers and older students.
Today, the cultural and economic life of Elektoralna Street is developing apace. Additionally, since the end of the war a modest housing estate has been built, along with the first of Warsaw’s so-called “millennials” (tysiąclatki) – schools-cum-monuments built for the thousandth anniversary of the Polish state.
Corner of Grzybowska and Żelazna

Corner of Grzybowska and Żelazna

If you walk along one of the surviving sections of the Ghetto wall, you will soon encounter a cuboid skyscraper, ninety two metres high. Within it – offices and a luxury hotel. On the hotel’s website, you can read that the rooms have an exceptional panoramic view of Warsaw’s city centre. Back in the 1940s, at the crossroads of Żelazna and Grzybowska, right on the spot where the hotel stands today, German officers used to shoot at the crowds. “Bread and butter,” Hersz Wasser recorded in his diary.
Ruins on Twarda Street

Ruins on Twarda Street

On Twarda Street, in the shadow of an enormous skyscraper, there’s a small commemorative plaque where the southern gate of the Ghetto once stood.
On May 23, 1942, on the pavement outside 22 Twarda Street, a group of soldiers organised a film shoot, one of several the Germans organised in the Ghetto over the course of the war. They gathered a number of Jews in front of a bakery, giving them 500 zlotys each and instructing them to elbow their way to the front of the bread queue. They ordered a street urchin to steal a loaf of bread. (A white loaf of bread. It had to be a white loaf of bread.) Then they ordered a Jewish policeman to apprehend the boy and beat him bloody.
Ruins on Twarda Street

Ruins on Twarda Street

On Twarda Street, in the shadow of an enormous skyscraper, there’s a small commemorative plaque where the southern gate of the Ghetto once stood.
On May 23, 1942, on the pavement outside 22 Twarda Street, a group of soldiers organised a film shoot, one of several the Germans organised in the Ghetto over the course of the war. They gathered a number of Jews in front of a bakery, giving them 500 zlotys each and instructing them to elbow their way to the front of the bread queue. They ordered a street urchin to steal a loaf of bread. (A white loaf of bread. It had to be a white loaf of bread.) Then they ordered a Jewish policeman to apprehend the boy and beat him bloody.
Umschlagplatz
Central Prison on Gęsia Street
Lubeckiego Street
Lubeckiego Street
Ruins on Pańska, Twarda and Muranowska Streets
Ruins on Pańska, Twarda and Muranowska Streets
Przejazd Street
Przejazd Street
Karmelicka Street
Karmelicka Street
Borochow School Nowolipki
TOPOROL
Bridge on Chłodna
Chłodna Street
Chłodna Street
Waliców and Krochmalna Streets
Żelazna Street
Żelazna Street
Gate to the Jewish Cemetery
Grzybowski Square
Judenrat Office Grzybowska Street
Elektoralna Street
Elektoralna Street
Corner of Grzybowska and Żelazna
Rickshaws on Chłodna and Żelazna Streets

Rickshaws on Chłodna and Żelazna Streets

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Market Place on Miła Street
Market Place on Miła Street
Bonifraterska Street
Ciepła Street

Ciepła Street

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Ciepła Street

Ciepła Street

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Ogrodowa Street Jewish Police Quarters
Ruins on Twarda Street

Ruins on Twarda Street

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Ruins on Twarda Street

Ruins on Twarda Street

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Explore the map by touching dots

To see the photographs, a researcher does not have to travel all the way to Warsaw anymore. She can easily access the Institute’s website from anywhere in the world. She can look at the photos, the remnants which bear witness beyond the limits of language. They were taken by an insider, an unidentified Jewish photographer who risked his or her life to take them.

The maps on this website provide information about the present realities of the places depicted in the photographs. They also make use of witness accounts preserved in oral history archives and historical narratives such as Hanna Krall’s To Steal a March on God. Ultimately, though, no single map can do justice to the richness of Warsaw’s multilayered topography. That is why I encourage you to carry out your own explorations of the endless archive that is Poland’s capital city. You can download a map of the area I write about in my project and mark your searches on social media using the hashtag #hiddenstreetsofwarsaw.

I hope that The Streets of the Archive will help you better understand the complexities of Warsaw’s historical landscape. Together, we can commemorate the singular life of an Eastern European community – the living fabric of human experience.

Follow on Instagram: streets_of_the_archive

The project is one of the winners of the international event HistoryLab2022 held by IBB Dortmund and is implemented with the financial support of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. #civilsocietycooperation #digitalhistorynetwork

© Copyright 2023 Anna Świtaj

Umschlagplatz

The photo depicts members of the Judenrat on the Umschlagplatz. They are wearing armbands with the title “Umschlagplatzarbeiter” written on them. In 1942, from this square, the Germans transported hundreds of thousands of Jews to Treblinka.

Everyone who showed up on the Umschlagplatz received a loaf of bread for the journey. „They wouldn’t waste bread on us,” people said. The ghetto food ration amounted to 600, sometimes 800 calories — for some, an extra bite was worth more than a human life.

On Stawki Street, a section of the Umschlagplatz’s wall still stands. It is surrounded by pebbles – symbols of remembrance.

Gęsiówka Prison

Where the Central Detention Centre once stood, now there are blocks of flats. There’s also some greenery. And Oleg’s, the local deli, reliably stocked with sweets and sweetened drinks, less reliably with vegetables and bread.

On a photograph taken nearby, a group of women are depicted holding loaves of bread. They have just been released from the Central Detention Centre thanks to the intervention of Adam Czerniaków, president of the Judenrat.

As the women left the prison, each of them was given a loaf of bread. Inside, their daily calorie intake had varied from 400 to 500 calories. Outside, they were able to breathe in the fresh air, having spent days and weeks in overcrowded cells. Soon after the closing of the ghetto, cells suitable for 20 prisoners had held around 100.

The photograph is entitled Women Hungrily Eating Bread Issued from a Food Storage Facility. Many of the Ghetto’s residents were never given the chance to hold such loaves in their hands.

Lubeckiego Street

Lubeckiego Street was one of the subjects of Heinrich Jost’s 1941 photo reportage.

Jost was a German Wermacht sergeant who on 19 September 1941 was celebrating his 43rd birthday. Before meeting with his colleagues at the Bristol Hotel (a luxurious establishment in the center of Warsaw, on the aryan side), he decided to visit the Ghetto.

While there, he photographed its busiest streets, as well as the Jewish cemetery. He documented the street trade – the primary focus of his 140-photograph reportage. He captured the Ghetto’s residents selling their possessions in order to buy vegetables and flour. And the starving children, begging for bread.

After his visit to the Ghetto, Jost cancelled his meeting at the Bristol. He developed his negatives in one of Warsaw’s photographic studios, and kept them by his side until the end of the war.

After 1945, he decided to hide them. Only in 1982 did he write to the German magazine “Stern,” asking if it would publish his photographs. As a result, Gunter Schwarberg, one of the editors of “Stern,” was able to conduct a number of interviews with Jost. But the editorial office was wary of publishing the photographs. Jost died in 1983, five years before his photographs were put on display in Jerusalem. Today, Heinrich Jost’s collection is available online, presented by a number of digital archives across the world.

The Ruins of Pańska, Twarda, and Muranowska Street

Despite the appalling conditions they had to contend with, many of the Ghetto’s residents were willing to provide assistance for family members living in other areas of Poland. The lists they prepared looked something like this:

1 dark blue dress
1 brown skirt
1 brown jacket
1 suit
3 shirts
1 nightgown
2 pairs of underwear
1 pair of soft boots
1 pair of brown shoes
1 pair of snow boots
1 pair of women’s stockings

Hersz Wasser sent clothes to his relatives in Łódź from 6/15 Muranowska Street.

At present, there is a hotel on Muranowska Street, right next to the Polonia football stadium. Opposite the hotel – a monument to the Murdered in the East. By the Soviets.

Przejazd Street

The building visible on the photograph beyond the wall of the Ghetto is the Mostowski Palace. Although only fifteen percent of the palace survived the war, today it is one of Muranów’s stateliest buildings. Zygmunt Stępiński and Mieczysław Kuźma were responsible for its 1949 reconstruction. During the period of communist rule in Poland, it functioned as the headquarters of the Citizens’ Militia. At present, it is the headquarters of the Warsaw Metropolitan Police.

The section of the wall depicted in the photograph separated Przejazd Street (the Jewish side) from the Palace (the Aryan side). Przejazd Street was well-known as a major smuggling point. Heavily built up, it was rarely patrolled by the German gendarmes, and the nearest gate was several hundred meters away. Sacks of flour and other foodstuffs were thrown over the wall. Occasionally, smugglers would get shot while climbing over the walls. But this was a relatively rare occurrence, all things considered.

Karmelicka Street

Karmelicka smelled of the ghetto: decomposing fish and decomposing corpses. It connected the Small Ghetto with the Large Ghetto to its north. The Small Ghetto was were the wealthier people lived – the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia. The two parts of the Ghetto were connected by wooden footbridges running over the streets.

Many memoirs describe Karmelicka as the Ghetto’s ghastliest street. Fish, crowds, corpses on the pavements, endless bartering. The Germans would often drive down it, shooting at people and beating them with batons. The teenage Janina Bauman used to walk down this street with Mietek, her lover. They would try to talk, despite the smell of the rotting corpses and fish.

The Ber Borochow School at 68 Nowolipki Street

This is where the Ringelblum Archive was hidden. The first part was buried in the basement of the school on 3 August 1942, the second part in the beginning of February 1943.

In September 1946, the first part of the archive was discovered thanks to the efforts of surviving members of Oneg Shabbat – Rachela Auerbach, Hersz Wasser, and Bluma Wasser. Only Wasser knew where the archive had been hidden.

In December 1950, during the reconstruction of Nowolipki Street, the second part of the archive was found. A third part is rumoured to have been buried in a different location, on the site of the current Chinese embassy. It has not been found, and many researchers doubt its existence.

The archive contains several thousand documents (manuscripts, prints, and photographs), 28,000 pages in all. The majority of the documents found in the ruins of the building on Nowolipki Street were written in Yiddish and Polish; they were hidden in iron boxes and milk churns; among the documents were a number of drawings and paintings by Gela Seksztajn and Beniamin Rozenfeld, as well as a collection of photographs. A few years ago, the entire Archive was digitalised, so that all the documents are now available online, most of them in Polish and Yiddish. In addition to the written documents, 61 photographs can be found on the Jewish Historical Institute’s website.

In 1999, the archive was included in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.

TOPOROL – Skra Football Stadium

The Monument of the Common Martyrdom of Jews and Poles, designed by Tadeusz Szumielewicz and Marek Martens, is located on the site of the former Skra football stadium. Its simple granite tiles evoke the form of a sacrificial altar. On public holidays, a gas flame flickers on its crest. During the occupation, all sports were prohibited. The football stadium was used as an execution site.

For a time, the playing field was also used by TOPOROL – the Association for the Support of Agriculture. Cabbage, beetroot, and potatoes were grown there for aid organisations operating in the Ghetto. All of the Ghetto’s green areas were TOPOROL’s responsibility. In addition to growing vegetables, its members looked after flowerbeds, herbaria, and gardens for children. Greenery is important in cities. Even under occupation.

The Bridge above Chłodna Street

Close to the crossroads of Chłodna and Żelazna, four metal pillars rise up from either side of the street. These pillars commemorate a wooden bridge that stood there between January and August 1942. At night, a blue and white light shines down on the passers-by — the bridge’s outline, glowing in the dark.

The bridge connected the southern part of the ghetto, called the “Small Ghetto”, to the northern part – the “Large Ghetto.” From the top of the bridge you could see the Hale Mirowskie trade centre, the tower of the fire station, the Saxon Garden, the Cedergren tower on Zielna Street, the crosses Warsaw’s churches, and even the bank of the Vistula River. They called it the bridge of sighs: Ponte dei Sospiri. From its deck, you could see “the Aryan Warsaw, the ‘free’ Warsaw.” The footbridge was dismantled after Grossaktion Warsaw – the first phase of the liquidation of the ghetto.

Chłodna Street

Traces of the tram tracks that used to run through Chłodna Street can still be discerned today. The tram was reserved for the residents of the Aryan side, and it passed through the Ghetto without stopping. There were long lines of rickshaws on Chłodna Street. One day, Janina Bauman and a boy called Mietek took a rickshaw from the “Large Ghetto” to the “Small” one. They were carrying a gramophone that they needed for a dance they were organising in the apartment of Mietek’s family. Janina Bauman did not feel comfortable taking the rickshaw – she felt it wasn’t fair towards the person who had to pull it. But it was prom night, their night. Mietek had bought a few old recordings from a man at the market. She was not prepared to dance in silence.

Waliców and Krochmalna Streets

“I am a scout,” I heard on my way to Krochmalna Street. “I’m responsible for a group of children. It’s different when you know the children you meet every week, whose names you know by heart”.

Krochmalna Street was just one of the places which witnessed the starvation of the ghetto. Grey-haired, thirty-year-old Rytka Urban, frenzied eyes embedded in her face, bit off the flesh of her twelve-year old son, having watched him die of hunger the day before. A few houses further up the road, at 14 Krochmalna Street, the corpse of a child, Moszek, was abandoned by Chudesa Borensztajn, Moszek’s mother. She confessed that she had left him there because she was expected to pay for the burial, and she didn’t have enough money. She then added that she was going to die soon too. Some of the names of the children who died on the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto have survived. Most have not.

Żelazna Street

Whenever Otto Helmer was on duty, shots could be heard nearby the Żelazno-Leszno gate. The terror of the ghetto, Helmer was nicknamed Frankenstein. He relished inflicting pain – shooting at random pedestrians and punishing apprehended smugglers. A number of Jewish diaries contain stories of Frankenstein’s crimes. He was referred to as “the monster man,” “the angel of death,” “the blood hound,” “the beast.” People said he even looked like Frankenstein’s monster.

Nowadays, there are several restaurants and numerous residential buildings on Żelazna Street. Close by, there is also a pen repair shop. Traces of the Ghetto – a piece of wall – can still be seen on the street. There’s also a plaque commemorating the Warsaw Uprising. At one end of Żelazna, modern skyscrapers dominate the cityscape – signs of the Warsaw to come.

The Jewish Cemetery

The Jewish cemetery survived the war. On the photograph, the building of the Funeral Home is visible beyond the gate of the cemetery. During the occupation, it was seldom in use. As a rule, the dead were gathered from the streets of the Ghetto and transported in carts to the cemetery. Occasionally, a rabbi would accompany them. As he sang his laments, the bodies were hastily buried in common graves.

The Germans were fond of making films. They documented the corpses scattered around the cemetery, the corpses lying in the morgues. To prove their respect for the dead, they also arranged some funeral scenes. For example: an old Jew over a young woman’s body.

Grzybowski Square

I look up at Warsaw’s sole surviving prewar synagogue. It’s Saturday, so it’s closed. Nonetheless, I can hear voices inside – preparations perhaps for the afternoon prayers. On the other side of the street – a church. It already stood there when the decision to build the synagogue was made. During the war, it was cut off from the city by the walls of the Ghetto. In the first week of December 1940, the church’s priest delivered a fiery sermon in support of the Ghetto’s Christian minority. He promised to take care of his parishioners, assuring them that he would organise a canteen for them and help them escape to the Aryan side. Many Jews convinced themselves that if they converted to Christianity, they would somehow survive the war.

When a Jewish Christian died, their relatives were not allowed to take part in their funeral, because Powązki Cemetery – the Catholic necropolis – was located beyond the Ghetto’s walls. If any Jews were allowed to leave the Ghetto, it was not to mourn, but to work.

Judenrat Grzybowska

The photo depicts Adam Czerniaków, president of the Judenrat, amongst other Judenrat officials. On the evening of July 23 1942, the first day of the deportations to Treblinka, Czerniaków killed himself by taking a cyanide capsule in his office. In a note to his wife, he wrote: “They demand that I murder my nation’s children with my own two hands. I have nothing to live for.” Marek Edelman recalled that throughout the course of Grossaktion Warsaw – the mass deportations of the Ghetto’s residents to Treblinka – there was only one rainy day: July 23.

The German authorities ordered Czerniaków to prepare the Jewish population of Warsaw for “resettlement to the East.” He did everything he could to rescue Jewish orphans, but he was ultimately unsuccessful. Instead, he obtained exemptions for a different group of people: sanitation workers, the spouses of factory workers, and a number of students. The Jews who were permitted to remain in Warsaw were factory workers, hospital staff members, members of the Judenrat, and the Ghetto policemen along with their families. Between July and September 1942, nearly 300,000 people were deported, nearly all of whom died in Treblinka’s gas chambers.

Elektoralna Street

One of the many apartments where illegal lessons were held for the Ghetto’s youth was located on Elektoralna Street. Many Jewish parents wanted their children to continue their education. They were able to find money for tutoring and school lessons conducted by pre-war teachers and older students.

Today, the cultural and economic life of Elektoralna Street is developing apace. Additionally, since the end of the war a modest housing estate has been built, along with the first of Warsaw’s so-called “millennials” (tysiąclatki) – schools-cum-monuments built for the thousandth anniversary of the Polish state.

Corner of Grzybowska and Żelazna Streets

If you walk along one of the surviving sections of the Ghetto wall, you will soon encounter a cuboid skyscraper, ninety two metres high. Within it – offices and a luxury hotel. On the hotel’s website, you can read that the rooms have an exceptional panoramic view of Warsaw’s city centre. Back in the 1940s, at the crossroads of Żelazna and Grzybowska, right on the spot where the hotel stands today, German officers used to shoot at the crowds. “Bread and butter,” Hersz Wasser recorded in his diary.

Rickshaws on Chłodna and Żelazna Streets

Shortly before the closing of the Ghetto, Marek Edelman encountered a crowd on Żelazna Street, gathered around a barrel. An old Jew with a long beard was standing on the barrel. Two German officers were cutting off his beard with large pairs of tailor’s scissors. The Germans were laughing. The crowd was laughing. No real harm was being done to the Jew. The entire scene looked like it belonged to a silent comedy. That’s when Edelman realised that the most important thing of all was not to let anyone push you onto the barrel. Ever.

Market Place on Miła Street

Today, several housing estates are located in the vicinity of Miła Street, on both sides of Aleja Jana Pawła II – testimonies to the great reconstruction of Muranów.

During the Ghetto uprising, the bunker of one of its leaders, Mordechai Anielewicz, was located on Miła Street. On May 6, 1943, ten days before the end of the uprising, Anielewicz met up with Marek Edelman and his group on Franciszkańska Street to discuss their plan of action. But they were all too tired. And besides, there was nothing to talk about. So they went to sleep instead. The next day, Anielewicz insisted on returning to his bunker on Miła Street. Edelman and his group decided to escort him. The next day, they went once again to Miła Street. It was dark. They called out, but no one answered. A boy informed them that Anielewicz and the others had committed suicide.

In 1946, on the site of Anielewicz’s bunker, a mound was built from the rubble of Miła Street. It is known today as Anielewicz Mound. Close by, there is a monument. Its inscription reads: “Here they rest, buried as they fell, to remind us that the whole earth is their grave.”

Bonifraterska Street

Today, there are residential buildings, a stadium, and a grocery store on Bonifraterska Street. There is also the Church of John of God. During the war, there was a hospital next to the church.

It was located outside the Ghetto. It was intended for the military. At least that was what Karol Rotgeber was told when he tried to get himself admitted into it.

The hospitals in the Ghetto were overcrowded and dirty. Several patients often had to share a single bed. Many of them suffered from starvation, others from beating injuries or bullet wounds.

During the deportations of 1942, the hospitals in the Ghetto were successively shuttered. The last one to be closed was the hospital nearby the Umschlagplatz. When it became clear that it too was about to be liquidated, Adina Blady Szwajgier and Anna Margolis decided to give cyanide to its underage patients. Cyanide was considered a luxury good. Those who took it died painless deaths. Silent deaths.

Ciepła Street

It’s difficult to figure out where Ciepła Street once was. Has it moved since the war? Has the new shopping center taken its place? The Hale Mirowskie market place is nearby. A lot of noise, throngs of Christmas crowds – even bigger than usual.

On October 13, 1940, German gendarmes took away all the furniture from a tenement house on Ciepła Street, leaving the terrified residents with nothing. An orchestra was playing in the street. The Germans ordered a waltz to be played. They ordered the onlookers to dance. They made other people pay for the performance, both poor and rich. They grabbed a group of women and ordered them to undress. After delivering thirty blows each to their victims, they left.

Ogrodowa Street Jewish Police Quarters

The photo depicts a Jewish policeman at the headquarters of the Jewish Order Service on Ogrodowa Street. On the right, there is a statue of the Virgin Mary. (Our Lady of Grace, to be precise.) A similar statue can be seen today on Chłodna Street. No information has survived about the Mary on Ogrodowa Street. With open arms, the Virgin looks down at the earth. A crown of stars adorns her face. There is snow in the yard. It is 1941. Or 1942.

During the deportations to Treblinka, each Jewish policeman was required to bring five individuals to the Umschlagplatz every day. To ensure that they carried out their duty, the policemen’s families were held as hostages.

A policeman let a Jewish photographer take his picture. Why? Jews were not allowed to take photographs in the Ghetto. Anyone who did was liable to severe punishment.

The photograph survived, hidden beneath the streets of the Ghetto.

The Ruins of Twarda Street

On Twarda Street, in the shadow of an enormous skyscraper, there’s a small commemorative plaque where the southern gate of the Ghetto once stood.

On May 23, 1942, on the pavement outside 22 Twarda Street, a group of soldiers organised a film shoot, one of several the Germans organised in the Ghetto over the course of the war. They gathered a number of Jews in front of a bakery, giving them 500 zlotys each and instructing them to elbow their way to the front of the bread queue. They ordered a street urchin to steal a loaf of bread. (A white loaf of bread. It had to be a white loaf of bread.) Then they ordered a Jewish policeman to apprehend the boy and beat him bloody.

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