Warsaw WWII History Tour: Explore the Jewish Ghetto & Uprisings

1939-1940 Shock of Nazi terror. Polish resistance and Underground State
Tour’s schedule is organised in chronological order. The first part is looking for witnesses of the war in downtown Warsaw. The wounds are still visible - you just need to know where to look for them. Next, the guide introduces you to the international situation in the late 1930s and the WWII outbreak in 1939. It was the time of shock caused by nazi and communist (the Soviet Union captured eastern Poland) terror and the birth of Polish resistance.

1940 Jewish Ghetto
The crucial part of WWII history in Poland is the tragedy of Jewish citizens who were oppressed and murdered by German Nazis. Poland was home to 3 million Jews, 300 000 of them lived in Warsaw. In 1940 German Nazis created Warsaw Ghetto and squeezed half a million Jews into it.

Fragment of Ghetto Wall
A few fragments of the Ghetto Wall running between the properties are preserved, as well as the walls of the pre-war buildings that marked the border of the ghetto. The three best-known parts of the wall are located in the former small ghetto, although some are periodically not accessible: the guide takes you to one of them.

Derelict tenement house
The Waliców street tenement house is, as we say, the last ghost from the Ghetto since it remains a ruin up to now. Also - there is a fragment of the Ghetto wall preserved in the same place.

The bridge over Chłodna
In 1941 Ghetto was divided into two parts by Chłodna street, used for East-West transfer traffic. The wooden bridge was built near the intersection of Chłodna and Żelazna streets to link two parts. It reached the third floor of the buildings, which allowed the “Aryan” trams, German military transports and cars to pass beneath it, as we can see in many photographs.

1943 Jewish Ghetto Uprising
The next stop is the Muranów district. Again, the first impression is that it is just a regular neighbourhood filled with squared blocks of flats. But there is much more from the past to be discovered with the help of a guide.

Monument to the Ghetto Heroes
The monument of the Ghetto Heroes and Polin museum are two symbolic and essential places where your guide takes you. Both are located near the spot where the first armed clash of the 1943 uprising took place. Yet, at the same time, it is where Polish, Jewish and German nations reconciled through several events throughout the last 50 years.

Monument to the Fallen and Murdered in the East
On September 17th 1939, two weeks after the outbreak of WWII in Europe, Poland was attacked by the Soviet Union, and the Eastern part of our country was lost forever. After the fall of the USSR, the Monument to the Fallen and Murdered in the East was erected in honour of Poles deported to Gulags in Siberia, killed in executions and the victims of the Katyń massacres.

1944 Warsaw Uprising
Later in World War II, an agreement was reached between the Western Allies and the dictator of the USSR, Stalin; as a result, post-war Poland was about to become a country subordinate to the Soviet Union. The last attempt to avoid this fate was the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, which resulted in the Nazis destroying 85% of Warsaw. Red Army captured the empty city three months after the fall of the insurrection, in January 1945.