On April 22, 2023, installations symbolically marking the place where civilians hid during the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising stood in six locations in Muranów. In this way, the POLIN Museum, together with the SENNA collective, wants to restore the memory of these places to urban reality. By doing so, we are also reminding the civilians - the most numerous group participating in the 1943 uprising. We have selected 6 figures who are at the same time heroes and heroines of the temporary exhibition "Around us a sea of fire".

Her name and surname remain unknown. She left a diary[1.1] written during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The first entry from April 24 was noted as the sixth day of hiding in a bunker, next to the plot at 32 Miła St. On that day, the Germans set all the neighbouring buildings on fire. Forty-five people from the hideouts affected by fire fled and squeezed into the bunker.

The author debated with the bunker’s owners on how to deal with overcrowding and food shortages. The management was elected, and the daily routine, sharing the supplies and distribution of duties were all agreed upon. The author was assigned to guard duty to keep a close watch on the bunker’s surroundings. The underground bunker tenants formed a community. At the same time, the deteriorating living conditions and fear, conflicts and mutual resentment grew.

In the diary, the author suggests that her family was involved in designing and constructing the bunker. She recalls her uncle and brother who hid in an adjacent shelter. There is no mention about any other relatives in her notes, but she did write about “boys from our party” who were fighting in the Uprising. She sympathised with them.

Sunday morning, 2 May 1943, marks the last entry in the diary. The following pages bear no division into separate days. According to the account, they were hiding in the bunker for at least three weeks. The diary is a record of the growing sense of despair, loneliness and lack of hope for rescue.

“The only thing we have left is this shelter… We live day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute.”

This sentence ends the manuscript. We do not know what happened to the author afterwards.

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