Before World War II, the Jewish community in Warsaw stood at about 350,000. That was almost one-third of the city's population and the second-largest Jewish community outside of New York. Toward the end of 1940, the Nazis herded the city's entire Jewish population, as well as around 100,000 Jews from elsewhere in Poland, into a small ghetto area west of the Old Town. Walls went up, and an elaborate system of gates and staircases was built to allow Jews to move within the ghetto, but no one was permitted to enter or leave. The first deportations and mass killings began at the end of 1941. In the 1943 Ghetto Uprising (not to be confused with the 1944 Warsaw Uprising), the Jews heroically rose up against their oppressors. The uprising was quickly put down, and what remained of the ghetto was liquidated.
In postwar reconstruction, the area was planted with cheap housing blocks. The Monument to the Ghetto Heroes (Pomnik Bohaterów Getta; ul. Zamenhofa, near the crossing with ul. Anielewicza) is amid these Communist-era buildings. Opposite the monument, is the Museum of the History of Polish Jews POLIN (http://www.polin.pl). To the west of the monument is the Willy Brandt Statue (Skwer Willy Brandta), erected to commemorate the visit of Chancellor Willy Brandt in December 1970 when the German head of state knelt in front of the Ghetto Heroes' monument.
To see surviving samples of the derelict 19th-century tenement houses riddled with bullets, head to Prózna Street in the former Jewish ghetto. At the courtyard of no. 55 Sienna St., you'll find a fragment of a ghetto wall and a simple plaque. Long narrow metal plaques have been installed on pavements to mark the places where some of the ghetto walls stood. You'll find these plaques at the crossing of Zelazna and Chodna streets, and also at the crossing of Zelazna Street and Solidarnosci Avenue.
Today, hardly any of the Jewish culture remains. But in recent years, there has been a growing interest in the lost heritage. The Jewish Theater presents a repertoire of Jewish cultural plays and musical performances. Check the website of the Shalom Foundation (Pl. Grzybowski 12/16; tel. 22/620-30-36; www.shalom.org.pl) for the schedule of the annual Festival of Singer's Warsaw, which can be in any week from August to October. A wider range of Jewish cuisine is slowly showing up on the city's tables. Leading the way is the Tel Aviv Café (Poznanska 11; tel. 22/621-11-28; www.tel-aviv.pl). It has good soups and a lavish Sunday breakfast.
Most of the city's tourist agencies have tours of Jewish Warsaw. For a self-guided tour, pick up the Jewish Warsaw walking itinerary designed by the Warsaw Tourist Office.
The Pianist's Warsaw
Roman Polanski's Oscar-winning film The Pianist (2002) recounts life in Warsaw during World War II through the eyes of Wadysaw Szpilman, an accomplished pianist and composer and one of the Warsaw ghetto's best-known survivors. Adrien Brody starred as the protagonist in the production that garnered three Oscars and numerous international awards. Based on Szpilman's autobiography, the film shows the horrific conditions of life within the perimeters of the ghetto, one of the largest of the Jewish ghettos in Poland during the war. The concrete-bunker style Umschlagplatz Monument (Stawki 10, near the corner with Dzika St.) marks the place where the Jews boarded cattle wagons to the Treblinka extermination camp . Although Szpilman narrowly escaped deportation to Treblinka here, this scene for the movie was filmed in a military compound in the outskirts of the city. To capture the mood of war-torn Warsaw, part of the filming took place in Praga, with its scores of dilapidated prewar buildings. After the war, Szpilman returned to his job at the Polish Radio. He passed away in July 2000 and is buried in the Powazki Cemetery.
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