Pre-World War Two Warsaw had a Jewish population second only to New
York. After the Nazi invasion, some 400,000 Jews were
rounded up and forced into the Jewish ghetto. A ten-foot wall encircled the
area, from the Palace of Culture and Science to the Umschlagplatz
Monument, at the corner of ulica Stawki
and ulica Dzika. This stark monument, erected in the late 1980s, marks the
place from where Jews were taken by train to the Treblinka concentration camp,
following the Ghetto Uprising of 19
April 1943. The center of the ghetto is marked by the Monument
to the Ghetto Heroes, which was erected on a sea of ruins in 1948. Other
memorials are the Monument of the Killed and Murdered in the East, and
the 1944 Warsaw Uprising
Monument. Only three
sections of the actual ghetto wall remain.
Further information about the Jewish Ghetto is available at the Jewish
Historical Institute Gallery, located on the site of the former Great
Synagogue. The Institute has a permanent display of work by Jewish artists, as
well as photographs and documents relating to the Jewish ghetto, a bookshop,
with volumes in English, on the Jews of Eastern Europe and archives at the Ronald
S. Lauder Foundation. There are also plans for a brand new Jewish museum,
which will be built on the site of the ghetto and funded by Jewish groups
around the world.
Visiting Warsaw
There are direct flights to Warsaw
from most places in Europe, as well as major US
cities. Train service is available, though it can be as expensive as discounted
air travel unless one has a discount rail pass. Poland’s
road network is good and is getting better. There is a bus and tram network
that connects most places in the city, and a single line metro which connects
the southern suburbs to the city center.