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- Warsaw, the capital of Poland, once had a Jewish population equivalent to the number of Jews living in all of France. It was the only city that rivaled New York’s Jewish population. The city’s Jewish population was decimated during the Holocaust. Today only fragments remain.
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/warsaw-poland
The Jewish Commune of Warsaw (Gmina Wyznaniowa Żydowska) is one of eight in the country; Chief Rabbi of Poland Michael Schudrich resides in the city. There are also 3 active synagogues , one of which is the pre-war Nożyk Synagogue designated for Orthodox Jews .
The city of Warsaw, capital of Poland, flanks both banks of the Vistula River. A city of 1.3 million inhabitants, Warsaw was the capital of the resurrected Polish state in 1918. Before World War II, the city was a major center of Jewish life and culture in Poland.
- Early History
- Religious, Social & Political Life
- Jewish Press
- World War I & Inter-War Period
- The Holocaust
- Deportations
- Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
- Post-War Warsaw
- Present-Day Community
- Jewish Tourist Sites
Jews settled in Warsaw during the 14th century, after the reign of King Kazimierz. Even at this early stage, non-Jewish townsmen felt hostility toward the Jews. In 1483, Jewish inhabitants were expelled from Warsaw. From 1527-1768, Jews were officially banned from the city; consequently, Jewish settlers lived in jurydykas (privately owned settlemen...
During the late 1800s, Hasidism further spread throughout Warsaw. Nearly two-thirds of Warsaw’s 300 approved synagogues were Hasidic. On the other hand, the rise of the Mitnaggdim also grew with the arrival of the Litvaks. Warsaw’s Jewish leadership, until the end of the 1860s, was mainly Orthodox. Four rabbis served all of Warsaw, and they removed...
Yiddish and Polish weeklies emerged in the 1820s and the Hebrew Press began later in the 1880s. Warsaw became the center of Hebrew publishing in Poland, and many famous writers either lived or worked in the city, including Isaac Bashevis Singer, Shalom Asch, I.L. Peretz, David Frischman, and Nachum Sokolow.
During World War I, thousands of refugees came to Warsaw. By 1917, there were 343,000 Jews living in Warsaw, about 41% of the total population. In this period, the Jewish population increased, while the percentage of Jews living in Warsaw, compared to non-Jews, decreased to about 30%. Many Jews — about 34% in 1931 — were unemployed. The main politi...
Warsaw’s pre-war Jewish population in 1939 was 393,950 Jews, approximately one-third of the city’s total. From October 1939 to January 1940, Germans enacted anti-Jewish measures, including forced labor, the wearing of a Jewish star, and a prohibition against riding on public transportation. In April 1940, the construction of the ghetto walls began....
This first mass deportation of 300,000 Jews to Treblinka began in the summer of 1942. The number of deportees averaged about 5,000-7,000 people daily and reached a high of 13,000. At first, ghetto factory workers, Jewish police, Judenrat members, hospital workers, and their families were spared, but they were also periodically subject to deportatio...
Following the armed resistance in January 1943, all social institutions and the Judenrat ceased to function, and even walking on the streets became illegal. Mordechai Anielewicz, at the age of 24, became the leader of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB). He recruited more than 750 fighters but amassed only nine rifles, 59 pistols, and a couple o...
In September 1944, Warsaw’s eastern suburb, Praga, was liberated, and in January 1945, the main parts of the city on the left bank were liberated by the Soviets. About 6,000 Jews participated in the battle for the liberation of Warsaw. Two thousand Jewish survivors were found in underground hideouts when the city was liberated. When the city stadiu...
Currently, most of Poland’s Jewish population lives in Warsaw. The Union of Religious Congregations has its main office in Warsaw. There is both a Jewish primary school and a kindergarten. Warsaw also houses the offices of the Main Judaic Library and Museum of Jewish Martyrology. It is also the home of the E.R. Kaminska Jewish Theater, the only reg...
Not one house in the Warsaw Ghetto survived. Everything was rebuilt after the war, and the area is now a residential neighborhood. Several monuments to the ghetto and uprising are scattered about the area. The Bunker on 18 Mila Street More than 100 people died on May 8, when the Nazis surrounded the bunker. Nothing remains from the bunker. It is ma...
Jewish settlers were probably present in Warsaw’s earliest years, which coincided with the first significant wave of Jewish immigration into Poland. The first documentary evidence of Jews in the city dates from 1414. At that time, Jews probably lived on Żydowska Street in the Old Town; they built a synagogue and a cemetery on Wąski Dunaj Street.
The Warsaw Ghetto (German: Warschauer Ghetto, officially Jüdischer Wohnbezirk in Warschau, "Jewish Residential District in Warsaw"; Polish: getto warszawskie) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust.
Some Jews, coming from a variety of different prewar organizations, prepared for armed struggle against their Nazi enemies, culminating with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April and May 1943, the largest and most consequential Jewish revolt against the Nazis of World War II.
Since October 1940, the Germans had been deporting Warsaw's entire Jewish population (several hundred thousand, some 30% of the city) to the Warsaw Ghetto. [34] They amassed c. 500,000 people on the area of c. 2.6 square kilometres (1.0 sq mi).
