Unseen Soundwalks

The largest synagogue ever built in Poland. The Great Synagogue was built between 1876 and 1878 according to a design by Leandro Marconi. Warsaw’s largest Jewish temple housed an impressive 2,200 seats. The grand opening took place on 26th September 1878 and was attended by many guests, including the city authorities. The sermon, in Polish, was delivered by Isaac Cylkow, rabbi and translator of th...

An address where the Jewish and Polish worlds met and intermingled.  Pasaż Simonsa (Simons’ Passage) owes its name to the German industrialist and building’s owner Albert Simons. The building complex consisted of two sections. The first part started being used in 1903, and construction as a whole was completed in 1906. The first building was in the shape of an arc that ran from Długa 50 to Nalewki...

One of the most important locations in Yiddish theatre. Michał Weichert, a lawyer, but also an avant-garde director and theatre theoretician, lived at 8a Długa Street from the mid-1930s. A figure of great merit for the history of Yiddish and Polish theatre, he founded the Young Theatre (Yung-Teater). Originally hailing from Galicia, the Polish territory partitioned by Austria-Hungary, Weichert set...

The worldwide embassy for Yiddish literature. In the Jewish cultural memory, 13 Tłomackie Street is the address of the worldwide embassy for Yiddish literature, a kind of British Council or Goethe Institute, as well as the Ministry of Diasporic Culture and the Cultural Parliament in one. This ‘global address’, as the journalist Jecheskiel Najman called it, became a symbol of pre-war cultural life,...

The editorial offices of Haynt, the largest Yiddish daily newspaper of the Interwar period. The first issue of the Zionist Haynt daily was published on 22nd January 1908, while the last issue came out on 22nd September 1939, shortly before the capitulation of Warsaw. Around 300 issues were published annually from Sunday to Friday, both in Warsaw as well as in other local versions. All of them were...

Where the elites of the Interwar Jewish stage spent time together. Before World War II, the building on Leszno 2 housed the headquarters of the Union of Jewish Stage Artists (Yidisher Artistn Fareyn). It was founded in 1919 to support Jewish directors and actors and to defend their rights. On the face of the building was a clock created by the watchmaker Epstein. All the residents of the neighbour...

The home of Yitskhok Leybush Peretz, the father of modern Yiddish literature. The now non-existent Ceglana 1 is an address of almost mythical proportions in the history of Jewish culture thanks to Yitskhok Leybush Peretz, the father of modern Yiddish literature, who lived at this address. The Peretz House on Ceglana Street became a real cultural institution. Publishers, musicians, artists, theatre...

One of the most renowned addresses of pre-war Jewish Warsaw.  Długa 26 housed the socialist Bund party headquarters from 1936 onwards, as well as the capital’s first school with Yiddish as the language of instruction. Other political organisations based here included the Masada Zionist youth union. Alter Kacyzne had his professional photography studio in one of the three courtyards the building ha...

It was in this vicinity that one of the most daring operations of the Home Army resistance took place – the assassination of the SS commander and head of police for the Warsaw district, Franz Kutschera. In the autumn of 1943, SS-Brigadeführer Franz Kutschera was transferred to Warsaw with the aim of pacifying Polish resistance to the Nazi occupation. As soon as he took up his post, the number of s...

The Church of St. Stanisław serves as just one reminder of the brutal massacre of the civilian population of the Wola district, in line with Hitler’s orders to raze Warsaw to the ground and destroy the city completely… Following the outbreak of the Uprising, Germans stationed in Warsaw started to indiscriminately kill Poles living in the city, both insurgents as well as civilians. However, it is i...

Slated to close in the summer of 1944, by mid-July the Germans started to evacuate the camp, although by the time the Uprising started there were still around 400 inmates, mostly non-Polish Jews from across occupied Europe. Storming the Gęsiówka camp was no easy task. The whole prison was surrounded by guard towers and bunkers, all armed to the hilt. The insurgents used a captured Panther tank – d...

In mid-August 1944, over 300 people died in one of the most tragic episodes of the Uprising when a radio-controlled vehicle carrying half a tonne of explosives blew up after Poles thought they had seized it. On the morning of the 13th of August 1944, the Germans launched an assault on the Old Town from their positions at the nearby Castle Square. At 0900 hours, a tracked vehicle, what seemed to be...

It’s 1730 hours on the 26th of March 1943. Operation “Meksyk II”, commonly known as Operation Arsenal, has just got under way… Commander Stanisław Broniewski, codename “Orsza”, has given the order to attack a Nazi prisoner transport vehicle. It’s carrying Jan Bytnar, codename “Rudy,” from Gestapo heaquarters to nearby Pawiak prison. However, with the original plan going up in smoke, the Polish con...

The Bank of Poland building was a temporary fortification for the insurgents during the first month of the Uprising, but the Polish underground had already been at work here long before…  During the Nazi occupation, the building’s function didn’t change, and became a Bank of Issue for the Nazi Germans’ General Government. A number of the bank’s Polish employees also worked with the underground, se...

This monolithic building, which used to stretch all the way to Marszałkowska Street, housed a number of important organisations before being destroyed by German bombing in early September 1944. Apart from housing the Polish Home Army headquarters, the PKO building also had a sanitary point which was later converted into a field hospital, providing beds and sanitation for up to 400 wounded combatan...

Napoleon Square, now called Warsaw Uprising Square, was one of the most central points downtown during the 63 days of fighting. In the first few hours of the struggle against the Nazi occupiers, insurgents stormed the Prudential building and hung the Polish white-and-red flag from its roof, making it visible from all parts of the city. The main post office, which stood where the National Bank of P...

The PAST building was one of the most important buildings in Warsaw for the German Nazi occupiers.  The telephone exchange housed inside the building was a communications nerve centre for the Nazi war effort on the Eastern Front, which by late 1944 was moving ever closer to Poland’s capital. The storming of the PAST was one of the most spectacular events during the 63 days of the Warsaw Uprising:...

When the Warsaw Uprising broke out in August 1944, Aleje Jerozolimskie was under constant German fire, and crossing the street was a deadly undertaking… It was here that a barricade was built in the first days of the Uprising to provide an essential communications corridor between the north and south parts of the city centre held by the Home Army. In the opening days of the Uprising, insurgents go...

On 24 October 1956, Władysław Gomułka, the new leader of the Polish communist party, took to the Tribune of Honour to address the Polish nation. The newly built Parade Square with the domineering Palace of Culture was the perfect backdrop for his speech which marked the beginning of a new era of Polish socialism following the cold years of Stalinism. The Tribune of Honour is the only piece of arch...

Sienna 16 / Śliska 9 At the beginning of August 1942, an elderly well-dressed gentleman left home with around 200 orphans in tow. It was to be their last outing. Sienna 16 was the last address of Janusz Korczak’s Dom Sierota orphans’ home before he and his children were killed at the Nazi German death camp of Treblinka in the first week of August 1942. Janusz Korczak was a pediatrician, renowned a...

Poland’s first and arguably most eminent music label, Syrena Record, had its premises here from its early years up until 1939. The company was established in 1904 by Juliusz Feigenbaum, an industrialist from Warsaw. It was the first record production company in Poland, and the fourth worldwide! Taking on the name Syrena in 1908, the company went on to become the main driving force of the Polish mu...

In October 1939, a young Richard Pipes witnessed the Nazi victory parade through Warsaw from the window of his family’s fourth-floor apartment. It was then that his family knew they had to escape Warsaw, and Poland. At the beginning of the war a number of Americans were also left stranded in the city. American film-maker and photographer Julien Bryan stayed to document the atrocities of war, appea...

One of the tallest office buildings on this pre-war street became the heart of Polish Radio for a decade. The radio station provided broadcasts for almost the entire country, with a super-charged 120kW transmitter – the most powerful in Europe when constructed – broadcasting from Raszyn, just outside Warsaw. The building on Zielna Street has another history though. It was at this address that the...

Marszałkowska 119 Towards the end of World War II, a legendary singer decided to open a café in a ruined building in the centre of town. Mieczysław Fogg is one of the most revered Polish singers with a career spanning a number of decades throughout the 20th century. But he did more than just entertain audiences across, the globe, however. In 1945, Warsaw lay in ruins, as was testified by a group o...

There were a number shops at this address, which was located on the corner of Marszałkowska and Chmielna streets. We learn a little about Polish fashion in the inter-war period and choose a hat from the renowned Mieszkowski boutique. After that we go the neighbouring Wedel chocolate salon and talk marketing tactics. Further reading: The Bitter-Sweet Story Of Wedel, Poland’s Famous Chocolatier http...