Monday, July 11, 2016

Mapping Jewish Warsaw


The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews is a museum situated on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto. Over the last year the museum has created a couple of fascinating interactive maps exploring the history of Warsaw's Jews and the plight of the city's Jews under Nazi occupation in the Second World War.

The Right Address: Hiding Jews in Occupied Warsaw tells the stories of Warsaw citizens who helped the Jews during World War II. The main navigation method used to access the stories is a vintage map of the city which allows you to select these stories by neighborhood.

Pick a neighborhood from the main map and you can view a close-up map of the neighborhood. This map includes the choice to view a modern map of the city overlaid on top of the vintage map. Each neighborhood map includes a description of the neighborhood in the 1940's and a brief account of Nazi activity in the area.

Each neighborhood map also includes a number of markers. If you click on these markers you can learn about how individual Jews and families were sheltered by non-Jewish citizens at addresses throughout the city.


Jewish Warsaw is a mapped account of the long history of the Jewish community in the Polish capital. It examines the city through the eyes of some of Warsaw's most influential Jewish citizens and examines some of the important, often turbulent, historical events that have effected Jewish citizens in Warsaw.

The Janusz Korczak section of Jewish Warsaw presents two interactive mapped journeys exploring the life of the famous Jewish educator and children's author. One of the maps takes you on a journey through Korczak's life in pre-war Warsaw. The other map recounts Korczak's bravery in World War II and his deportation and death at Treblinka extermination camp.

In the Past and Present section you can learn more about the history of the Jewish community in Warsaw through a series of interactive vintage maps of the city. This section includes an account of the long history of Jews in Warsaw, a mapped account of the Jewish ghetto and Holocaust in World War II and a number of walking tours through the Warsaw of today.

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