Publishing Department

The first non-academic publication devoted to Tłomackie Square and Street – a location of particular importance for the Jewish community of Warsaw. It explores the history of the place, its residents and institutions that had their seats here against Warsaw’s broader historical context. Tłomackie is presented as a Jewish religious and cultural centre located at the intersection of religions and cultures – in a Christian environment, in the vicinity of the Evangelical-Augsburg and Evangelical-Reformed parishes. The authors of the texts discuss, among others, the origins and development of the Tłomackie jurydyka’s urban layout, as well as the transformation and social significance of the place throughout the centuries – from the old times to the present.

Although the Great Synagogue and most elements of former Tłomackie have long ceased to exist, their memory is kept alive through numerous initiatives, many of them undertaken by the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute. Today, the residents of Warsaw are welcome to visit the Institute seat, tour its exhibitions, spend time in the Tłomackie Bookstore, or take part in a wide array of educational events or walking tours, all of which go to show that the memory of the capital’s Jewish past, albeit fading into the background in certain periods of Polish history, has very much survived. Former Tłomackie will never return, but the new one, at number 3/5, faces a bright future ahead.

Based on the text by Dr. Bartosz Borys