The Jewish History Free Walking Tour of Warsaw

About the tour

To talk about the history of Warsaw is to talk about the notorious presence of the Jewish community in the city for a very long time. A devastating fact was the census of Jews in the prelude to the outbreak of World War II in 1939. At that time almost 3.5 million resided in Poland, but in the United States there was a larger population worldwide. Today without official statistics, the number is estimate to 10,000 in the whole Polish nation.

The meeting point of this tour is the Taras Widokowy Tower very close to the Church of Santa Ana and the Segismundo column. From there we will walk towards the areas where they lived in the fifteenth century, such as Waski Dunaj Street, finding aspects about the context and what was key in the arrival of the first Jews. Who was the king who boosted Poland's economy based on them? How was the coexistence? What were the settlements in the city? To what extent did the long period of the country's partitions affect the community?

We will know where the Great Synagogue was located, traditions and intellectuals, who by the way, one of them proved a true revolution in the non-domestic linguistic field.

We will pass through the Ghetto Heroes route and we will go through some of the scenarios where they were crowded into what was the largest space created for isolation purposes in all of Europe. In Warsaw there were two ghettos and to cross on foot from each other there was a walkway, to such a historic and dramatic place we will approach.

We will delve into the issues related to what life was there, some institutions, names of some of those declared Fair among the Nations, and also precision of terms. Is the word Holocaust correct or is there another one more accurate?

The terror was lived daily and the Jews rose with determination in front of the Nazis in the 1943 Uprising. This will be discussed next to a monument created shortly after the end of the war, next to what was recognized as the best Museum in Europe in 2016, POLIN, a space that addresses the History of Polish Jews. POLIN by the way is a name with a mysterious and beautiful halo, it will be the perfect closure of the route.