This former road led from the Nowe Miasto, through (the later) ul. Franciszkańska and, its extension, (the later) ulica Gęsia, to the Młociński route, (the later ul. Zamenhofa. In the first half of the 18th century, it was extended to ul. Smocza and after 1771, to Okopy Lubomirskiego, where ul. Okopowa was constructed - according Jarosław Zieliński.[1.1]

It gained its name in 1770. On the corner of ul. Gęsia and ul. Nalewki, there once were cisterns, which supplied water, through wooden pipes, along ul. Franciszkańska and ul. Koźla, to the Rynek Nowomiejski. The wooden vessels, which were used to draw water from the cisterns, were called nalewki. The Third Paving Commission (1742-1766), headed by Crown Grand Marshall Franciszek Bieliński, ordered the paving of the most important communication routes – Gęsia Street was among them.

According to the “List of the Number of Houses Owned by Jews in 1900”, stored in the State Archives in Warsaw, from a total of 6,066 houses, 1,937 belonged to Jews (i.e. 31.9%), which approximately coincided with Warsaw’s ethnic proportions.

That list includes 252 streets, with an indication of the number of houses, on each street, which were owned by Christians and by Jews. Only in a dozen or so streets did the number of tenements owned by Jews significantly exceed the number owned by Christians. At that time, the largest number of “Jewish tenements” were on ul. Pawia (59), Miła (58) and Gęsia (50). When it came to the percentage of Jewish owners as against Christian owners, in first place was ul. Franciszkańska – up to 94% (32 Jews as opposed to 2 Christians), followed by ul. Miła – 85% (58 Jews to 10 Christians) and ul. Gęsia – 76% (50 Jews to 15 Christians).[1.2]

Inter-war Warsaw had the largest Jewish population in Europe and the second largest in the world, after New York. In August 1939, Warsaw’s Jewish population stood at around 380,000. (Out of a population of 1.3 million, that constituted 29%.)

Just prior to the outbreak of World War II, there were over 440 synagogues and prayer-houses. At different times, there eighteen of them were on ul. Gęsia. On the eastern side, from Nalewki to Zamenhofa, there were seven. In the middle section, from Zamenhofa to Lubeckiego (today, Jana Pawła II, there were seven and, from Lubeckiego to Smocza, there were four.

Two synagogues are worthy of attention.

The tenement at ul. Gęsia 27 was built in 1937 or 1938. The prayer house, at that address, already appears in the 1869 census. Until the new building was erected, the prayer house operated in an outhouse of the old building. Two photographs of the prayer house’s interior, in 1940, have been preserved. It was also there that an assembly point was established there for displaced people from other districts of Warsaw and from Kalisz, Łódź, Poznań and Aleksandrów [Łódzki].[1.3]  The tenement at No. 27 stood on what is today the corner with ul. Karmelicka.

In the 19^th and first half of the 20^th centuries, the textile industry was almost entirely the domain of Jewish trade. Ul. Nalewki and ul. Gęsia were at the forefront. It was the location of representative offices of large Łódź manufacturers such as “N. Ejtingon & Co.”, “I. K. Poznański” and “Widzewska Manufaktura”, as well as of numerous Jewish factories in Bielsko, Częstochowa and, especially, Białystok[1.4].

This is how Bernard Singer (Regnis), a Jewish press journalist, writing in Polish, Yiddish and Hebrew, and also a parliamentary reporter, remembers the turn of the 19^th to 20 centuries:

“On Nalewki, they sold lace, fancy goods and hosiery. On Gęsia, they traded in goods made in Moscow and Łódź. On Franciszkańska, people bought leather from Radom. On Grzybów, they traded in iron. (…) There was an ‘intruder” who sold soap on Nalewki instead of Franciszkańska. There were also gentile oases in our district. (…) Skarżyński sold soap on Nalewki, which was bought by housekeepers on Saturdays”.[1.5]

The luxury soap king of Warsaw was Fryderyk Puls. He had two tenements on ul. Gęsia – at No. 27 (at the corner of today’s Anielewicza and today’s Karmelicka) and at No. 95 (where, today, there is a terminus for bus routes 107 and 111, at the corner of Anielewicza and Esperanto). Bernard Mark, the director of the Jewish Historical Institute (1949–1966), considered the section of Gęsia, between Nalewki and Zamenhofa, to be the “the centre of medium level in textile goods and where trade was never carried out for cash, but mainly using bills of exchange”.[1.6]

Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer, in his essay about the streets of Warsaw, published in the New York “Forwerts”, on 2^nd July 1944, wrote:

“On ul. Gęsia, there were huge textile warehouses, where customers from all over Poland bought their supplies. It was here that they talked about the rise and fall of the stock market, where they commented on the exchange rate of foreign currencies and, here, where they pondered as to whether the value of the pound sterling would rise.

“Here, Chassidic Jews wore stiff collars and ties, because it helped in business. In this area, people dreamed of building Israel and of a socialist revolution. Here, in the morning, Jewish newspapers were snapped up and, here, crowds of Litvaks roamed the streets.”[1.7]

The eastern section of ul. Gęsia was particularly saturated with places where cloth, cloth goods, fabrics and linen were traded. Trade included in clothing, women’s and men’s underwear, stockings, sock, scarves, etc. It is impossible to list all the studios, workshops, warehouses and shops offering these products.

Just in the section of Gęsia, between Nalewki and Zamenhofa, there were as many as 484 of them, not taking into account what is referred to as “manufactured goods” in the companies database of the State Archives in Warsaw. The record holders are at No.4 (as many as 56 warehouses, workshops and sales points), No. 7 (52 places) and No. 10 (49 places).

These buildings not only disappeared from the face of the earth, they also lost any contact with today’s ul. Anielewicza. It follows the path of the former ul. Gęsia, but only from ul. Okopowa and ul. Karmelicka. Ul. Anielewicza was clearly moved south towards Krasiński Park, to connect with ul. Świętojerska, which was moved north.

The former ul. Gęsia ran straight east into Nalewki and then continued as Franciszkańska. The intersection of Gęsia, Nalewki and Franciszkańska was, at the time, one of the busiest intersections.

***

The entirety of ul. Gęsia – between ul. Nalewki and ul. Okopowa – was located within the boundaries of the ghetto, from the time when the ghetto was closed-off until the end of the ghetto liquidation operation. Following the liquidation operation, the “residual ghetto” was divided into the central ghetto, the main area containing the magazines, and the “wild areas”, where the Jews were not permitted to remain. Then, until the outbreak of the uprising, ul. Gęsia was the border separating the central ghetto (to the north) and the “wild areas” (to the south).

In the summer of 1941, on the orders of the Germans, a prison for Jews was established in the ghetto – the Central Detention Centre of the Jewish District (Zentralarrest für den jüdischen Wohnbezirk), commonly referred to as Gęsiówka[1.8]. The prison was located in part of a huge complex of buildings used by the former Crown Artillery Barracks (later known as the Wołyń Barracks) from the end of the 18^th century.

The front of the main building, with three large courtyards, was located at ul. Zamenhofa 19. Today, this is the site of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Further development, at the back of the Barracks, stretched along ul. Gęsia 22 and 24. The Central Jail was initially located at and, when that turned out to be insufficient, it was moved to the premises of the former military prison at ul. Gęsia 24. It was a kind of prison within a prison.

The Gęsia prison was a separate unit in the Jewish Order Police (SP), i.e. the Jewish police, established on the orders of the German authorities, but supervised by the Polish navy-blue police. As “Gazeta Żydowska” reported: “Arrests are carried out by the Order Police, under the supervision of the Polish Police Headquarters.”[1.9]

Its leader was Leopold Lindefeld. Before the war, he was a judicial assessor at the Court of Appeal in Warsaw. He was shot by the Germans in the “Gęsiówka”, which he headed. The head of the women’s department was Sylwia Hurwicz, a lawyer from Łódź.

Jews detained on the “Aryan side”, caught smuggling or stealing were held on Gęsia. They had previously been imprisoned on the “Aryan side” (at Rakowiecka, Daniłowiczowska or Pawiak). Jews remaining on the “Aryan side” without an armband and without permission were committing a serious crime and were subject to the German Special Court (Sondergericht).

According to official statement, the task of the Central Detention Centre was to gather together all Jewish prisoners in the ghetto, in order to provide them with better living conditions. However, the opposite occurred. According to the plans, the detention centre was supposed to accommodate a maximum of 500-600 people. But, in fact, as many of three times as many detainees were imprisoned there, including a large number of children and youth. The prevailing conditions in the cells were terrible.

Menachem Mendel Kon, a social activist and part of the “Oneg Shabbat” group which created the “Ringelblum Archive”, during his visit to the prison on 25^th May 1942, draws attention to the unimaginable stuffiness, overcrowding and extreme exhaustion of the prisoners:

“The air is so poisonous that a significant percentage of prisoners die of poisoning. Going from cell to cell, we see terrifying scenes. There are people, who are emaciated, dehydrated, with sunken and extinguished eyes, human skeletons, ninety percent corpses. Despite the commandant’s order, they have no strength to get up! I shudder when I see these living dead, waving their arms – demanding something. (…) They want a little fresh air, but we are unable to provide it.”[1.10]

Eventually, Kon reaches a place which the prison commander calls the “death cells”, explaining that “very seriously ill prisoners are thrown into these four cells and, there, they wait to die. (…) The commandant opens the cells – it is such a hell, with such suffering, that it cannot be [simply] described. In a dark, dirty cell, wearing dirty rags, there are six moaning, squirming bodies. In no way can I recognise them as human beings.”[1.11]

Two loudly-announced executions took place, in the prison yard, on 17^th November and 15^th December 1941. Those executed were sentenced to death for illegally leaving the ghetto. In the first execution, eight people were shot (including six women) and, in the second, fifteen people (including twelve women). These events were written about in the Polish underground press and were commented upon by ghetto chroniclers.

The accused were to be shot by the Order Service, but the commander of the Jewish police, Szeryński, refused to carry out the order, threatening suicide. The Germans then ordered Polish policemen to carry out the executions. Of the thirty-two members of the firing squad, only one (Wiktor Załek, a corporal from the 20^th District, Service Number 3497, living at ul. Czerniakowska 1201) volunteered, for which he was condemned by the Polish underground press.

After the war, despite losing their roofs, the buildings of the Central Detention Centre remained in reasonable condition. Renovated, their bright façade clearly stood out from the ruins of the Wołyń Barracks building. A photograph, from 1961, shows a film crew and onlookers crowding against the walls of a bright building adjacent to the Barracks and located along the former ul. Gęsia, today’s ul. Anielewicza.

On the opposite side, the construction of four nine-storey apartment buildings was being completed. They were separated from the street by a wide strip of empty space, which was later utilised as a car park. This car park covered the surviving foundations of the razed tenements at ul. Gęsia 29, 31, 31a and 33. The Wołyń Barracks and the buildings of the Central Detention Centre survived until 1965, when they were finally demolished. What remained of the Barracks was an empty grassy square, which the residents of Warsaw turned into an urban area and square.

In 2013, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews was erected there. Apartment buildings were constructed on the prison grounds and, over time, yards became covered with beautiful greenery.

***

The largest market in the Warsaw ghetto, called “Gęsiówka” or “Wołówka” [“Beef”]. Was located right next to the wall of the Central Detention Centre, on a spacious square at the corner of ul. Lubeckiego and ul Gęsia, enclosed by the prison wall from the east, ul. Gęsia from the south, ul. Smocza from the west and by the rears of the tenements on the odd-numbered side of ul. Ostrowska.

The street trade reflected the poverty, hunger and despair in the ghetto. Literally, anything could be bought and sold. Rachel Auerbach described “Gęsiówka” in this manner:

“Shreds of things and people – what a pitiful sight of hand-embroidered and hand-darned curtains, washed children’s underpants, the last towel taken “na tołczok” [to the bazaar], people often tearing the lining from inside their coats and selling them for a quarter of bread, as medicine for a sudden illness, and the stomach is a monster, a bottomless pit, absorbing everything and, the next day, it cries out for more!

“So, the last pieces of furniture the last shoes off their feet together with shoe brushes, there is nothing that could not be an item to be traded on “Gęsiówka”. Often, something better is sold and something worse is bought, so that the difference remains.

“Sometimes you see people on the street dressed à la Ghandi, with only a cloth over their bare backs. Apparently, items from the living are worth more in exchange, because a very large percentage of items obviously come from the dead.”[1.12]

Perec Opoczyński, a pre-war, well-known Jewish writer and journalist, describes the mechanisms of Polish-Jewish trade and the functioning of the market itself and its facilities:

“Day by day, the number of goyim in Wołówka [marketplace] began to increase and, with them, the number of Jewish dealers in antiques and sellers of household appliances. There are not many other sources of income in the ghetto. Even craftsmen brought their products to Wołówka. (…)

“When booths and stalls began to appear in the new Wołówka street, Jews invested primarily in field kitchens and supplied traders with tasty hot and cold meals. It was profitable for the goyim to pay Jews more for food, because the owners of the kitchens had corners in their booths, where the Polish traders could change their clothes – for a few groszy, they could change into the good quality clothes which they had just bought”.[1.13]

Today, on the site of the ghetto Wołówka, there is the intersection of ul. Anielewicza and al. Jana Pawła II, part of a housing estate built in the mid-1960s, extending to ul. Smocza, and new apartment buildings along the western side of al. Jana Pawła II, formerly ul. Juliana Marchlewskiego and, before the war, ul. Franciszka Ksawerego Druckiego Lubeckiego.

***

At the intersection of ul. Gęsia and ul. Smocza, at ul. Gęsia 30, there was an OBW (Ostdeutsche Bautischlerei Werkstätten GmbH) workshop, which took over the carpentry workshops of the Landau brothers, which was locate there before the war. This is a very important site in the history of the ghetto. Among other things, chests and furniture were manufactured there.

In mid-1942, the plant employed 900 workers. Its director was Aleksander Leib Landau and, at the same time, an underground social activist, one of the protectors of the Oneg Shabbat group, which collected and developed the Emanuel Ringelblum Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto. He gave it moral and financial support. He supported civil and armed resistance in the ghetto. He worked together with the Jewish Fighting Organisation (ŻOB).

In April 1943, with his wife and son, he crossed into the “Aryan side”, where he bought a foreign passport. He was part of the “Hotel Polski hoax”, the result of which he was taken to the camp for foreigners in Vittel, from where he was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was murdered in February 1944.

During the major liquidation operation, between 22^nd July and 21^st September 1942, a large group of underground activists, including some of Ringelblum’s Oneg Shabbat group, were gathered together at ul. Gęsia 30, in the OBW plant (also called “Landau’s plant”. Thanks to that, some of them avoided being transported to the Treblinka extermination camp. During the major liquidation, Ringelblum, himself, hid in Bernhard Hallman’s carpentry workshop at ul. Nowolipki 59. (Today, it is a four-storey apartment block in Muranów, at ul. Nowolipki 25, at the intersection of ul. Smocza).

During the deportation, Abraham Lewin (high school teacher, historian and writer) was employed in Landau’s workshop at ul. Gęsia 30. He was known, before the war, as the author of the book Kantonisten (Kantonists), an extensive historical sketch of the issue of forced conscription of Jewish boys into the tsarist army during the time of Nicholas I. He belonged the closed circle of Oneg Shabbat. He was especially notable for being a copier of archived documents. He called them “Nowolipie” – after the name of the street where he lived in the ghetto. He also sent interviews with refugees, reaching the ghetto, to the Ringelblum Archive.

From March 1942 to January 1943, he maintained a diary in Yiddish and Hebrew – one of the most important testimonies from the Warsaw ghetto. The last entry is dated 16^th January 1943. Lewin probably perished during the “January operation” – the second wave of deportations during 18^th-22^nd January 1943. Part of his diary was hidden in August 1942. The next part was hidden in February 1943. They were among the documents contained in the Ringelblum Archive, buried in the basement of the building at ul. Nowolipki 68. 

***

Aleksander Landau’s daughter, Margalit, was a member of Hashomer Ha’Tzair, a Jewish scout organisation with a leftist and Zionist orientation. She, together with Eliahu Różański and Mordecham Growas, executed the death sentence on Jakub Lejkin. Lejkin was head of the Order Service, after the arrest of the commander of the SP, Colonel Szeryński. Lejkin led the Jewish police during the major liquidation operation and is remembered by Jews as a cruel and ruthless enforcer of German orders. He lived at ul. Gęsia 18 or 20.

On Thursday, 29^th October 1942, in the evening, at the junction of today’s ul. Naleweki and ul. Zamenhofa, which was located in a different place from the pre-war one, less than one hundred metres from the Ghetto Heroes Monument, shots were fired. Jakub Lejkin, was killed by ŻOB fighters. Mieczysław Czapliński, a Jewish policeman accompanying him, was wounded. No one cried for Lejkin and his body may have been desecrated. Henryk Rudnicki writes about this in a report from July 1943:

“No one followed the funeral. I do not know how much truth there was in the rumours which circulated around the ghetto that, immediately after Lejkin was buried, his body was dug up and thrown into the garbage and manure. The reflects exactly the hatred felt towards this ‘commandant’”[1.14]

During the second deportation operation, which took place 18^th-22^nd January 1943, Margalit Landau took part in ŻOB’s first armed clash with the Germans. According to Anielewicz’s plan, a group of fighters was to join the column of people being driven to the Umschlagplatz and, at some point, the group was to attack the German escorts. The ŻOB fighters launched its attack at the corner of ul. Zamenhofa and ul. Niska, about one hundred metres from the gates of the Umschlagplatz. Antek Cukierman says:

“They began throwing grenades. Many died. People ran in all directions. We were convinced that all the fighters had died. For three days, I believed that Mordechaj had died – we didn’t know if he was still alive. One version says that he grabbed a rifle from the hands of a German.” ^[1.15]

Taking advantage of the confusion, some people managed to escape from the column and attempted to hide in nearby homes. However, the Germans quickly took control of the situation. Those who took part in the attack on Lejkin - Eliahu Różański and Margalit Landau – also died in this clash. Landau was the first woman in the Warsaw ghetto to throw grenades at the SS and German gendarmes. At the time of her death, she was seventeen-years-old.

***

In December 1941, the Jewish cemetery was separated from the ghetto and was now surrounded by a wall running along ul. Okopowa. In order to get to the cemetery, a special pass was required and normal funerals, with a procession of mourners, disappeared. Within the cemetery and the nearby SKRA stadium, large pits began to be created – mass graves for the bodies being brought here from all over the ghetto.

In September 1941, Rachela Auerbach could still enter the cemetery. She went there to find the body of one of those in her care at the people’s kitchen she ran. He had died from hunger, despite the efforts to save him. Extra servings of soup did not help. Rachela wanted to spare him from a mass burial – she wanted to give him an individual funeral. She looks for his body in the cemetery shed, which was strewn with corpses. She cannot find him. He had disappeared into the flood of corpses inundating the cemetery.

During a trip to Poland in the autumn of 1924, Alfred Döblin had visited Warsaw. He had strolled around the Nalewki-Muranów district. He walked along ul. Gęsia:

“It was the eve of the Jewish Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). In the morning, I wander down the long ul. Gęsia. (…) An incredible crown of people streams along the street and overflows into the trams. I walk beside a long, old building, a military prison. The windows are covered with red, tin boxes. Light enters the cells only from above. (...) There are incredible crowds in the side-streets. Stonemasons’ places herald the cemetery.

“It is the day of preparation for Jewish Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), which approaches. People are to repent and purify themselves. But, first, they must make peace with their deceased. Now, they go to the cemetery to visit their dead, to beg them for forgiveness and to intercede, for them, with God.

“A human river flows towards ul. Okopowa, where there is a large cemetery. It is surrounded by a low, red-brick wall. The iron gate is open. (…) Men stand by the wall, near the tree trunks, between the trees – alone and in groups. In their hands, they hold a book and, mumbling, humming and swaying, they shift from one foot to the other.

“Already, I am intrigued by the murmur coming from my right, from the cemetery – individual calls, very loud interrupted speech, wailing. At times, the chanting, the pleading and all the noise intensifies so much so that it resembles the sound of a market fair. The human river turns right and flows along the wall. (…)

“Suddenly, I am startled by a violent, high-pitched female voice which begins and ends, again and again, with a long, painful wail”[1.16]

On 20^th 1941, Rachela Auerbach writes in her diary: „

“And so, wagons of the dead, with full loads, arrive from everywhere. When you get to the ul. Gęsia area, you get the impression that the city is dying. On all the side-streets of ul. Gęsia, there are newly-established funeral homes which are full. Some have ceremonial signage, with laurel wreaths surrounding the standard Star of David, with silver inscriptions on a sorrowful background.

“And these names imitate long popular companies: ‘Os[tatni]a posługa’ [‘The Last Ministration’], ‘Ostatnia droga’ [‘The Final Road], ‘Prawdziwy świat’ [‘The Real World’] and ‘[Św]iat wieczysty’ [‘The Eternal World’]. It is a fair of corpses. On all the roads and pathways leading towards ul. Gęsia, there is a lively flow black carts and wagons – every step of the way, like streams, tributaries towards a great river that absorbs everything”[1.17]

***

In March 2023, during construction works, foundations were uncovered of pre-war houses along the odd-numbered side of ul. Gęsia (ul. Anielewicza) – between todays al. Jana Pawła II and ul Karmelicka (pre-war numbers ul Gęsia 29, 31, 31A and 33). The information board:

“A residential building, with retail and services on the ground floor and a two-level car-park, is planned here.” The developer is “Pasaż Wolski S.A.”. The preserved brick walls lining the structure of the basements, fragments of wooden floors singed by fire still visible today. Well-preserved are the cobblestones of the wards, fragments of sewage pipes, tiles, bottles, fitting and other small items – all post Jewish items.

All this had lain underground for eighty years – now it had been exposed. We see what is still left – the remnants of a world that has perished forever. Now these relics, these fragments of material testimony, are to be destroyed for a second time – this time, definitively, finally and forever.

Bulldozers will destroy the torn, but still existing, fabric of the walls. They will shatter the well-preserved pavement. They will crush to pieces the scattered items belonging to the residents, who had been exterminated. And all this, mixed with soil, rubble and garbage, will be taken away in containers. Excavators will drill into the surviving fabric of the buildings, tearing it apart and digging deep-down, due to the fact that the future apartment building is to have a two-level car-park.

All of ul. Gęsia is now underground, not only the tenement at No. 33. The buildings on both the even and odd-numbered sides of the street are covered with earth and rubble. Their foundations, items scattered around them and human remains are stuck here and there. That ul. Gęsia can no longer be uncovered – other buildings now stand over the top of them.

***

Joseph Tenenbaum, a prisoner in Mauthausen, Melk and Ebensee, came to Poland in April 1946. In his memoirs, In Search of a Lost People - the Old and New Poland, published in New York 1948, he talks about a chauffeur taking him around Warsaw. The chauffeur was from Gęsia Street in Warsaw. In 1946, he went there, looking for traces of the street in the ruins of the ghetto. But Gęsia was not there. Tenenbaum writes:

“He was neither a prophet nor a poet. But, his anxious ‘God, where is Gęsia?’ was more moving than any poem. He was born on ul. Gęsia and had lived there all his life before the war. But, in the sea of rubble, he could not see any landmark, which would indicate the place of his birth or where he had played”[1.18]

And, today, we can wry out, just like that chauffeur. “God, where is Gęsia?!”

Prof. Dr. hab. Jacek Leociak

Bibliography

• Auerbach R., Pisma z getta warszawskiego, Warszawa 2015
• Döblin A., Podróż po Polsce, [in] „Literatura na świecie”, no 6/1994
• Kon M.M, Moja wizyta w więzieniu w getcie, ARG, vol. 33
• Nalewajko-Kulikov J., Pierwsze wrażenia. Żydowski intelektualista w rzeczywistości odradzającej się Polski (na przykładzie Dawida Sfarda), [in:] Zagłada Żydów. Pamięć narodowa a pisanie historii w Polsce i we Francji, ed. Barbara Engelking and others, Lublin 2006