Waliców 14: The Tenement of the Ghetto Poet
Why is it significant?
Stand across the narrow street and look up at the towering, windowless facade of Waliców 14: a colossal cliff of red brick, stripped of its plaster, where raw patches of mortar and blackened shell splinters tell the story of two uprisings.
Key Facts
| Place | Waliców 14: The Tenement of the Ghetto Poet |
|---|---|
| Address | ul. Waliców 14, 00-865 Warszawa, Poland |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.23710, 20.99140 |
| Part of Walk | Lost World of Muranów: The Warsaw Ghetto, Resistance and Memory |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand across the narrow street and look up at the towering, windowless facade of Waliców 14: a colossal cliff of red brick, stripped of its plaster, where raw patches of mortar and blackened shell splinters tell the story of two uprisings. This tenement is one of the rare physical survivors of the Small Ghetto, a haunting architectural ghost standing directly opposite glass-clad office towers.
Built in the early 20th century, this five-storey building housed Jewish families, craftsmen and small workshops. In 1942, as the ghetto shrank, it became home to Władysław Szlengel, the greatest poet and satirist of the Warsaw Ghetto. Szlengel wrote satirical revues for ghetto cabarets by day and heartbreaking, defiant poems by night, typing them on carbon paper to be passed from hand to hand among the starving population like underground bread.
His poems, such as The Monument and Things, gave voice to the tragedy of ordinary people who watched their furniture and photographs carried away into the street. Szlengel wrote: When they come to take us, we will not go quietly... let our blood scream. During the April 1943 uprising, Szlengel hid in a bunker on Świętojerska street, where he was discovered and murdered by German forces in May at the age of twenty-eight.
During the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, Waliców street formed a key redoubt of the Home Army's Chrobry II Battalion. Insurgents held this building for sixty-three days under continuous Stuka dive-bomber attacks and tank shelling, yet the thick brick walls never collapsed. Today, preservationists have saved the building from demolition, ensuring that its bullet-scarred walls remain as an open-air document of endurance.
From Waliców, walk south along Żelazna street and turn left into Prosta, continuing eastwards toward the peaceful courtyard of Nożyk Synagogue on Twarda street.