logo

This field is hidden when viewing the form
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
  • BEST OF WARSAW
  • News
  • Events
  • Eat
  • Drink
  • Shop
  • Neighborhoods
  • More…
    • Features
    • Best of Summer
    • Food Halls & Hubs
    • Going Out
    • Education
    • Culture
    • Hotels
  • Magazine

16.11.2020

FeaturesInsider News

Eighty Years Of The Warsaw Ghetto

Despite numbering around a third of the capital’s population, under the Nazis the capital’s Jews found themselves imprisoned inside an area covering just 2.5% of the city.

Considered the most significant Ghetto of the 800 or so in the Third Reich, it was bound by a six-meter high wall crowned with barbed wire and surrounded by armed guards and signboards warning outsiders of typhus. At its peak, over 380,000 were contained inside, with the Nazis appointing a Council of Jews for the purposes of administration.

Separated into two sections, and linked by an overhead footbridge that spanned ul. Chłodna, conditions rapidly deteriorated despite cultural life temporarily flourishing. A Fotoplastikon on ul. Leszno offered what historian Norman Davies describes as “a popular eye on the outside world” and, to those few that could afford them, concerts, music halls and cafes offered a rich array of entertainment featuring the likes of Władysław Szpilman (immortalized in The Pianist) and ‘The Nightingale of the Ghetto’, Marysia Ajzensztadt.

“It was all a desperate form of escapism,” wrote Davies. “As someone remarked, ‘humor is the Ghetto’s only form of defence’.”

Likened to a “sealed and watertight torture chamber deep in the hold of a ship that had itself been hijacked by pirates”, residents soon became inured to the sight of suffering: ragged, starving urchins and emaciated corpses became commonplace on the crammed, congested streets.

Famously, Jan Karski was able to slip into the Ghetto to report back to the Polish underground exactly what was happening inside its walls.

“There was hardly a square yard of empty space,” Karski later said. “As we picked our way across the mud and rubble, the shadows of what had once been men and women flitted by us in pursuit of someone or something, their eyes blazing with some insane hunger or greed.”

“It was not a world,” Karski concluded. “It was not part of it.”

Tragically, as we all now know, things were to only get worse.

LOVED WHAT YOU READ?
Get weekly updates on Warsaw's best reviews, news, and events – sign up for our newsletter

This field is hidden when viewing the form
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Read more

10.06.2025

Vote for Warsaw’s Tree in the Polish Tree of the Year 2025 Competition!

05.06.2025

End of an Era: Warsaw’s Intraco Skyscraper Faces the Wrecking Ball

05.06.2025

Warsaw Opens Central Square: A Greener, Smarter City Center Emerges

Read more

10.06.2025

  • Features

Vote for Warsaw’s Tree in the Polish Tree of the Year 2025 Competition!

05.06.2025

  • Features

End of an Era: Warsaw’s Intraco Skyscraper Faces the Wrecking Ball

05.06.2025

  • Features

Warsaw Opens Central Square: A Greener, Smarter City Center Emerges

logo

Guide to good living
and fast times in Poland’s
capital

  • News
  • Insights
  • Events
  • Eat
  • Drink
  • Neighborhoods
  • Features
  • Culture
  • Best of Warsaw
  • Magazine

Magazine

  • Editorial Team
  • Newsletter Signup
  • Policy

Advertise With Us

  • Insider Media Kit
  • Guidelines
  • Distribution

Contact

  • Subscriptions
  • Career

VALKEA MEDIA S.A., www.valkea.com ul. Ficowskiego 15, Warszawa, Poland; tel. 22 257 75 00; e-mail: insider@warsawinsider.pl
All information ©2022 Warsaw Insider.