GĘIÓWKA COMMEMORATED

THE almost obligatory Jewish itinerary in Warsaw begins at the Ghetto Fighters’ Memorial, takes you through the ruins of the Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa (Jewish Fighting Organization, ŻOB) bunker at Miła Street, and ends at the Umschlagplatz, the starting point for the deportation trains to Treblinka. Having read inscriptions on several memorial plaques, visitors go on to the old Jewish cemetery at Okopowa Street. Leading to it is Mordechai Anielewicz Street, named in memory of the ŻOB commander. There, at number 34, just opposite the entrance to the devastated cemetery, another plaque is fixed to the wall.

On 1 August 1994, attracting worldwide attention, Poland commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the 1944 Warsaw uprising, remembering the enormous losses among the insurgents, the wholesale slaughter of the civil population, and the total destruction of their city. Four days later, in a modest ceremony that drew less attention, the plaque on the house at 34 Mordechai Anielewicz Street was unveiled. Its inscription, in Hebrew and Polish, states: ‘On 5 August 1944 the “Zośka” scouts’ battalion of the “Radosław” unit of the Armia Krajowa [Home Army, AK] captured the German concentration camp of “Gęsiówka” at this very spot and liberated 348 Jewish inmates, citizens of various countries in Europe. Many of them fought and fell in the Warsaw uprising.’

This was a symbolic event commemorating a little-known chapter of common Jewish–Polish fighting history in what used to be the very heart of the Jewish quarter and what became, after its destruction in 1943, the site of Gęsiówka camp, in the ruins of the ghetto. Not one of the old houses remains, but at least the street honours the name of Mordechai Anielewicz, the fallen hero of the 1943 ghetto uprising. It was here fifty years ago, on the afternoon of 5 August, that a voluntary force of two platoons of Polish scouts, led by a solitary Panther tank recently captured from the Germans, made a daring attack on Gęsiówka camp and succeeded in capturing it.