Tag Archives: Żychlin Cemetery Project 2025

Żychlin Cemetery Project 2025: Volunteers Arrive in Warsaw

12 Saturday Jul 2025

Posted by in Association of Descendants of Jewish Central Poland, Jewish Culture, Jewish Ghetto, Polish-Jewish Heritage, Polish-Jewish relations, Pre-World War II, Synagogues, Walfisz, Warsaw, World War II

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Nothing like spending the whole day on your feet the day after an overnight plane trip. But our group is intrepid.

Dinner on Friday night

The day began with a walking tour “The Unremovable Traces of the Warsaw Ghetto” led by Dr. Szymon Pietrzykowski of the Jewish Historical Institute. We started in the JHI in the lobby where the stone floor retains the burn stains caused by the fire bombs that destroyed the Great Synagogue in 1943 after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Great Synagogue in Warsaw. Photo source: Wikipedia
Burn marks dating from the destruction of the neighboring Great Synagogue in 1943.

We visited places where the former location of the ghetto walls are marked by metal plaques in the sidewalk, buildings reconstructed after the war, sites where important Jewish institutions were destroyed and never rebuilt, and places significant to the Jewish Ghetto Uprising and the archive of Jewish life in the ghetto collected by historian Emanuel Ringelblum.

Jewish Historical Institute on Tłomacka Street
The building that replaced the Great Synagogue. Note the arched feature evocative of synagogue windows.
Location of the ghetto wall
Traditional courtyard, one of the few showing what prewar Warsaw was like
Monument where part of the Ringelblum archive was found in milk cans under the rubble on Nowolipie Street

Our tour continued at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, led by our guide Martina.

Our group at POLIN in the reproduction of a wooden painted synagogue
Model of the Great Synagogue

After six hours of walking, we were ready to sit down. Paula, whose ancestor Tema Walfisz Jakubowicz grew up in Żychlin, treated us to a well-deserved meal. Many in our group got to try pierogi for the first time!