The Heart of the City That Once Was

The spring of 1940. For several months now, Warsaw has been under occupation. Schools are closed, German decrees strip Jewish welfare institutions of municipal funding, fragments of a strange, several metres tall wall start to appear around the town. The orphanage at 92 Krochmalna Street, run by Janusz Korczak and Stefania Wilczyńska, is dealing with changes, too. The number of charges is growing, the goods stocked up before the war are running short, but the caretakers are doing their best to ease the burden of the new order on their dependants. The orphanage continues to run according to the previous rules, with the adults and the children responsible for each other. 

The spring of 1940. A group of girls is sitting in the backyard of the orphanage and peeling potatoes, probably to be served for lunch or dinner. Thin peels are falling down on their grubby aprons. They need to be careful, peel as little of the potato as possible, and make sure nothing goes to waste. After all, nobody knows how long this war is going to last. 

The spring of 1940. In several weeks, the children from 92 Krochmalna Street, together with the charges of three other Jewish orphanages, are going to leave for a summer camp in Wawer. There, they will have a chance to enjoy the woods and the river for the last time. For a short while, they will be able to have unbridled fun, unaware that soon after returning to Warsaw, they will be moved to the ghetto. 

The spring of 1940. About the same time next year, the orphanage will be located at 33 Chłodna Street, in the building of the Maria and Józef Roesler School of Commerce. It will be different, more cramped, less comfortable. The children will be visited by guests “from the streets” who will tell them about how life is now. 

The spring of 1940. Nobody expects that in two years, the orphanage will occupy several rooms of the former seat of the Society of Commercial and Industrial Workers at 16 Sienna/9 Śliska Street. Nobody yet expects that at that point, in the spring of 1942, the facility will see a performance of a play by an Indian Nobel Prize winner – a play about death. Nobody knows that death will become the lot of not only the orphanage’s employees and charges, but also the dependants of other Jewish welfare institutions operating in the Warsaw ghetto, as well as hundreds of thousands of Warsaw Jews. 

The spring of 1940. May it last as long as possible. 

In our digital repository, the object can be viewed in the highest quality.

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