Jabłonowski Palace: The Town Hall of the Siege of 1939
Why is it significant?
Stop on the northern side of Plac Teatralny and look at the elegant palace with the slender clock tower. It is the Jabłonowski Palace, and for well over a century before the Second World War it was Warsaw's city hall.
Key Facts
| Place | Jabłonowski Palace: The Town Hall of the Siege of 1939 |
|---|---|
| Address | ul. Senatorska 14, 00-082 Warszawa, Poland |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.24470, 21.00960 |
| Part of Walk | Sixty-Three Days: The Warsaw Uprising of 1944, from Krasiński Square to Złota Street |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop on the northern side of Plac Teatralny and look at the elegant palace with the slender clock tower. It is the Jabłonowski Palace, and for well over a century before the Second World War it was Warsaw's city hall. To understand 1944, you have to start five years earlier, with the man who worked behind these windows.
On 1 September 1939 Germany invaded Poland. Within a week its armies stood at the edge of Warsaw, and the city was besieged. The mayor, Stefan Starzyński, an economist and former army officer, was asked to stay at his post as civilian commissioner for the defence. He organised fire brigades, food supplies and a civic guard, and almost every day he spoke to the city on the radio, calm and stubborn, telling people what was happening and asking them to hold on.
Warsaw Radio had a signal of its own. Between broadcasts it played Chopin's Polonaise in A major, the Military Polonaise, and listeners across Poland knew that as long as they heard it, the capital was still fighting. When the music stopped, everyone understood.
The bombing grew heavier towards the end of the month, the water supply failed, and on 28 September Warsaw capitulated. Starzyński refused offers to escape abroad. A few weeks later the Germans arrested him. He never came back, and his exact fate is still debated by historians; he most likely died in a German concentration camp. For Warsaw he became the face of 1939, the mayor who would not leave.
The palace itself did not survive the war. Its ruins were cleared and for decades the site stood empty, until the building you see was reconstructed in the 1990s. And keep the arithmetic in mind: the teenagers who heard the mayor's voice on the radio in 1939 were the young soldiers who went out at W-hour five years later. Now turn to the enormous colonnaded theatre that fills the southern side of the square, just a few steps away.