Femina Theatre & Leszno Street
Why is it significant?
Look up at the corner building on the north side of the boulevard, where the name Kino Femina is carved in stone above the street level: opened in 1938 as a modern cinema and revue hall, this venue became one of the most astonishing cultural phenomenon of the wartime ghetto.
Key Facts
| Place | Femina Theatre & Leszno Street |
|---|---|
| Address | Al. Solidarności 115, 00-140 Warszawa, Poland |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.24150, 20.99390 |
| Part of Walk | Lost World of Muranów: The Warsaw Ghetto, Resistance and Memory |
| Generated | Generated |
Look up at the corner building on the north side of the boulevard, where the name Kino Femina is carved in stone above the street level: opened in 1938 as a modern cinema and revue hall, this venue became one of the most astonishing cultural phenomenon of the wartime ghetto. On this street, then called Leszno, music and theatre defied the shadow of starvation.
When the ghetto was sealed in November 1940, Leszno was the bustling main avenue of the southern district, lined with kosher restaurants, coffee houses and bookstores. The German authorities permitted five theatres to operate inside the walls, and the Femina, with over nine hundred seats, was the largest and most prestigious. Concerts, operettas and symphonies were staged here under the direction of maestro Marian Neuteich and composer Israel Hammerman, drawing packed audiences who wore their best surviving clothes.
Among the pianists who performed at the Femina and in the nearby cafés along Leszno was young Władysław Szpilman, whose memoir inspired the film The Pianist. The undisputed darling of the hall was Marysia Ajzensztat, a twenty-year-old coloratura soprano dubbed by ghetto residents the Nightingale of the Ghetto. Her crystal-clear voice moved listeners to tears; during the Great Deportation of 1942, she was shot by an SS guard on the Umschlagplatz ramp while clinging to her parents.
To outsiders, cultural life in a starving ghetto seemed paradoxical, but for the incarcerated residents it was an act of spiritual resistance, proving that their humanity could not be crushed by hunger rations. The building survived the war almost intact when the surrounding blocks were blown up, and operated as a neighbourhood cinema until recent years.
Walk south along Żelazna street towards the intersection with Chłodna street, where the most famous visual divide of the ghetto once stood.