Dec 16 2020 - Dec 16 2020

Waliców Street

Date

Dec 16 2020 - Dec 16 2020

Location

When the Nazi occupants decided to section off the Warsaw ghetto in October 1940, a wall split Waliców Street right down the middle. Even numbers became part of the ghetto, odd numbers did not. Today the town house under the number 14 is one of the few surviving pre-war buildings in this area. Between the years 1940 and 1942, it stood right next to a border between two worlds.

From what information remain, we know that throughout the war the building was occupied by Dawid Szulman, a lawyer and member of the Jewish Military Union (ŻZW). He was the one who carried out a death sentence on Izrael Firszt for collaborating with Germans. The town house’s most famous tenant was Władysław Szlengel, a poet and lyric author who performed in Janusz Korczak’s orphanage during the time of occupation. Although overpopulated, the tenement building also became the home of an Uschomyr-born photograph, singer and satirist Menach Kipnis, who sang as a tenor in the Varsovian opera for over 16 years.

During the Warsaw Uprising, Waliców Street became a battleground for the Home Army Battalion “Sowiński”. The town house served as a front line, its windowless façade turned into a barricade.

address

The Ghetto Wall, Waliców Street

key figures

Władysław Szlengel, Lt. Romuald Podwysocki, pseud. „Ostoja”

date of event

September 24, 1944 – German attack on the insurgent positions on Waliców Street.

wartime fate

Since 1940, the border of the Warsaw Ghetto has run here.

modern-day fate

Until 2004 the building had a residential function. Since 2018 it has been entered in the register of monuments.

„On September 24th, German infantry attacked our position at Waliców Street. The assault was preceded by a huge explosion – a bomb demolished the façade of the building at Waliców 14. In spite of that, the insurgents pushed the attackers back. ”
Jerzy “Szpila” Woźniak„Sowiński” Battalion

„We punched a hole through the third floor wall of the building at Waliców, and one of the boys poked his hand out. The Germans started shooting, and we started shooting back. And that was it – war began! Captain Hall came, gathered us in one place and announced our surrender. He said that General “Monter” ordered the capitulation. It was hard for us to accept. And so we fought on.”
Eugeniusz “Siwy” Wojciechowski“Waligóra” Group, Battalion