Jewish Warsaw – part 2: the Holocaust

On the eve of World War II Warsaw was a vibrant centre of Jewish life and culture. It was inhabited by 370,000 Jewish men and women, making up one third of the city's population. Thus, Warsaw at that time was the second largest Jewish city in the world after New York. The multicoloured and multicultural world of Warsaw's Jews was almost completely annihilated during the Holocaust - most of the community was murdered by the Germans in gas chambers at Treblinka, a few hours away from Warsaw. Yet Jewish life, though badly damaged, managed to survive. Come with us on a journey to discover the richness of pre-war Jewish Warsaw, to understand the tragedy of the Holocaust, but also to experience the energy of contemporary Jewish life in constant transformation.This part of the tour is dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. We will see the memorial at the Umschlagplatz, from where ghetto residents were sent by trains to the Treblinka death camp. Next, we will walk along the Memory Lane to 18 Miła Street, where Mordechaj Anielewicz, the commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, took his own life in May 1943. We will end the walk at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes of 1948, standing in front of the recently opened POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.