WJU Students and Classrooms without Borders: Warsaw

Over the next few days, we will be taking a break from our series on Berlin and posting some observations from our trip to Poland with Classrooms without Borders. Our first stop on the trip was Warsaw and here we examined pre-war Jewish life before examining the fate of the city's Jews under Nazi rule. This segment of the study seminar ended in Treblinka, the Nazi death camp that murdered the overwhelming majority of the city's Jews. The following post was written by Jake Zirkle, class of '14.

The contrasting architecture of Warsaw

When we arrived at our hotel in Warsaw, we were greeted by a section of the city that consisted of sparkling modern buildings and drab post-war architecture. On our second night in Warsaw, we decided to go to a sports bar and watch the United States play Belgium in the World Cup. With fans of both countries in attendance, we had a great time watching the game. Once the game was over, we enjoyed conversation with some of the Polish and Belgian football fans who were happy to speak with us.

As it turns out, this beautiful section of the city that we were having a great time exploring was actually, at one time, the Warsaw Ghetto. It was unbelievable that the area we were having such a fantastic time in was once an area of tremendous suffering.


On September 1, 1939, the Germans invaded Poland. The Wehrmacht quickly moved through Poland, which was then invaded by the Red Army in mid-September. While Poland had been defeated within the first two weeks from a military perspective, Warsaw held out until the end of the month, with the German Army finally entering it on September 29, 1939.

A surviving piece of the Warsaw Ghetto wall

Warsaw's population was around 30% Jewish (350,000) and was the second largest Jewish community in the world. With the formation of the ghetto on October 12, 1940, the Germans managed to move over 400,000 Jews from Warsaw and surrounding towns into the constricted ghetto. This forced Jews to live in an area of 1.3 square miles with an average of 7.2 people per room.

The ghetto was sealed by a ten foot wall with barb wire running across the top. To prevent movement in and out of the ghetto, it was closely guarded by the Germans. A Jewish council (Judenrat) was created to administer German orders within the ghetto.
A Jewish engineer by the name of Adam Czerniakow was
made chairman of the Judenrat.

Jewish Cemetery

There were those who attempted to smuggle in food
and other items from outside of the ghetto.  We visited he Okopowa St. Jewish Cemetery, which was used for smuggling because of its proximity to both a Catholic and Protestant cemetery.

Jewish Cemetery

The Germans then began mass deportations, in sending Jews to forced-labor, concentration, and extermination camps. The location from which Warsaw's Jews were deported from the city was known as the Umschlagplatz.

As the memorial now located at the embarkation point notes, more than 300,000 Jews left Warsaw for the death camps -- primarily Treblinka -- from this spot.

The Umschlagplatz Memorial

 As the Germans prepared to finally clear the Warsaw ghetto in early 1943, the city's remaining Jews took to the sewers, attics, and streets of the ghetto in an attempt to resist German efforts. Despite some initial success, Warsaw's Jews were outnumbered and outgunned by their German persecutors and the revolt was finally burned out and crushed by SS forces in May1943. We visited the site where the headquarters of the revolt was located and then moved on to the memorial to the ghetto uprising. The memorial's two sides illustrate both the popular conception of how "Jews went to the slaughter like sheep" as well as the heroic resistance that manifested itself during the uprising.

The rear view of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Memorial.

The front side of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Memorial