A child’s shoe, a pram, charred or broken kitchen utensils: the objects brought together in the Polish capital tell how the Jews of Warsaw lived, loved and died during the war.
The exhibition at the Kordegarda Gallery opened for the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a desperate revolt by Jews against the terror of Nazi Germany.
Organized with the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, the collection features rare, recently unearthed traces of the Jewish Quarter during World War II.
“Warsaw is not one city, but two: one that we see, and the other down below, underground,” Jacek Konik, co-curator of the exhibition, told AFP. “These are the voices of a buried city that resound under our feet”.
Mr. Konik led excavations at a site adjacent to the bunker where uprising leader Mordechaj Anielewicz and his comrades committed suicide.
When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, about a third of the city’s residents were Jewish.
A year later, the occupants cordoned off their neighborhood to make it a ghetto that no Jew could leave freely.
“These are identical objects to those we found in the non-Jewish neighborhoods, so it is clear that the area sectioned into a ghetto was artificially sectioned,” underlines Mr. Konik.
Up to 450,000 Jews were crowded there in about three square kilometres.
When the Nazis launched mass deportations to death camps, some Jews sparked armed resistance on April 19, 1943.
Almost a month later, the uprising was brutally crushed by the Germans, and the ghetto razed to the ground.
Its remains remain buried and only occasionally see the light of day.
One of the several thousand objects excavated seems particularly significant: a charred doorknob with the key still stuck in the lock.
“This handle symbolizes the famous decree obliging the Jews to abandon their apartments and leave the keys on the door”, explains Mr. Konik.
There are also some surprising finds, like this photo of Igo Sym, a Polish actor who collaborated with the German occupiers. “We can assume that it belonged to a young admirer of the handsome pre-war actor,” said Mr. Konik.
“Unfortunately, behind that seductive appearance hid a monster,” he says of Sym later executed by the Polish Resistance.
The objects testify to the desire to continue to live despite the horrors of anti-Semitism and war.
“Perhaps this is the most moving thing: an ordinary life has been interrupted, and now, thanks to this exhibition, we can complete the story,” says Mr Konik.
There are very few buildings left from the ghetto, among others, this house located on Chlodna Street, where Adam Czerniakow had lived, charged by the Germans to direct the Jewish administration of the ghetto.
There are also photos from the time, but most were taken by the Nazis.
“It is very boring that we always see the ghetto through German eyes. It shouldn’t be like that,” Agnieszka Haska, from the Polish Holocaust Research Center, told AFP.
Also, the visitor will soon be able to consult recently discovered photos of the ghetto taken by a Polish firefighter.
These images are part of a new exhibit at the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, dedicated to the plight of civilians during the uprising.
“Instead of responding to orders to join the transports to near-death, they remained in hiding. Their silent act of resistance was as important as armed combat,” the Polin Museum says on its website.
This year, the commemorations of the uprising, which will be attended in particular by the Israeli and German presidents, must also highlight the point of view of civilians.
Directly opposite the museum is the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, an 11-meter long memorial, located at the site of many clashes during the uprising.
According to Ms. Haska, this monument also has its hidden side.
“We usually see (…) the one that shows the fight, the fighters”, in front of which the visiting officials lay their wreath, she says, but the second side of the monument, devoted to the experience of the civilians whom we particularly want to commemorate this year, is extremely interesting”.
This side shows a line of people on their way to death.
“In other words, old people, women, children living in the Warsaw ghetto, condemned to die,” said Ms. Haska.
18/04/2023 08:12:25 – Warsaw (AFP) © 2023 AFP
