Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It stands on the River Wisła (Vistula) in east-central Poland, and its population is officially estimated at 1.8 million residents within a greater metropolitan area of 3.1 million residents.
Warsaw traces its origins to a small fishing town, with the first known fortified settlement dating back to the 10th century. The city rose to prominence in the late 16th century when King Sigismund III decided to move the Polish capital and his royal court from Kraków. Warsaw served as the de facto capital of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1795, when it was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia in the third and final partition of Poland.
During the Napoleonic Wars, Warsaw was made the capital of a newly created French client state, known as the Duchy of Warsaw, after a portion of Poland's territory was liberated from Prussia, Russia and Austria in 1806. Following Napoleon's defeat and exile, the 1815 Congress of Vienna assigned Warsaw to Congress Poland, a constitutional monarchy under a personal union with Imperial Russia.
In 1830, the November Uprising broke out against foreign influence. The Polish-Russian war of 1831 ended in the uprising's defeat and in the curtailment of Congress Poland's autonomy. On the 27th of February 1861, during another surge of discontent, Russian troops fired on crowds in Warsaw protesting against their rule, killing five people. During the 1863-64 January Uprising, Warsaw was the headquarters of the Underground Polish National Government, though even that attempt to regain freedom failed.
Despite the tense political environment, the 19th century and its Industrial Revolution brought a demographic boom which made Warsaw one of the largest and most densely populated cities in Europe. Modernisation efforts resulted in building of the city’s first water and sewer systems, development of public transport and tram lines, street lighting and gas infrastructure.
During the First World War Warsaw was occupied by Germany. The Armistice of the 11th of November 1918 saw Polish underground leader Józef Piłsudski entering Warsaw and proclaiming the birth of the Second Polish Republic. Less than two years later, its independence was challenged during the Polish–Soviet War (1919–1921), in which the decisive Battle of Warsaw was fought on the city’s outskirts. The Polish military, under Piłsudski, successfully defended the capital, stopped the advance of the Bolshevik Red Army and temporarily halted the "export of the communist revolution" to other parts of Europe.
The Second World War began in 1939 with the aggression of two totalitarian powers against Poland. On the 1st of September 1939, the country was attacked by the German Reich, and on the 17th of September 1939, the Soviet Union joined in the assault. The German – Soviet military cooperation precipitated a disaster which left deep scars on the history of Poland. Known before for its elegant architecture, Warsaw was bombed and besieged. Much of the historic city was destroyed and its diverse population decimated.
The end of the war brought real liberation to Western Europe only, while Poland’s lot was subjugation under the Soviet heel. Successive generations of Poles, yet again, had to turn to the underground struggle to fight for their freedom and the independent state, a desire realized only after the downfall of Communism in 1989, fifty years after the tragedy of 1939.
After the war, the "Bricks for Warsaw" campaign was initiated, and large prefabricated housing projects were erected in Warsaw to address the major housing shortage. Much of the central district was designated for future skyscrapers. The 237-metre Palace of Culture and Science resembling New York's Empire State Building was built as a gift from the Soviet Union.
Despite wartime destruction and post-war remodelling, many of the historic streets, buildings, and churches were meticulously restored to their original form. The reconstructed Old Town, which represents examples of nearly every European architectural style and historical period, is now listed as the UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Today’s Warsaw is a modern and vibrant city, with thriving arts and club scenes, gourmet restaurants and large urban green spaces, with around a quarter of the city's area occupied by parks.
POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews
Prior to the Second World War, Poland was home to about 3.5 million Jews. Less than 10 percent survived German occupation, and most of those who lived, left Poland in waves of post war emigration.
A year after the invasion of Poland, Germans started forcing Warsaw's entire Jewish population into the Warsaw Ghetto. They herded almost half a million people into the area of just 2.6 square kilometres. Surrounded by walls that they built with their own hands, under strict and violent guard, the Jews of Warsaw were cut off from the outside world. 80,000 died there in appalling conditions of disease and starvation. Every Jew who had been caught escaping the Ghetto and every Pole, suspected of sheltering or helping Jews, had been punished with death.
In July 1942 the deportations to the Treblinka death camp began. On the 19 th of April 1943, after the order came to annihilate the Ghetto as part of Hitler's "Final Solution", (which was the codename for the plan to murder all Jews), Jewish fighters launched the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Despite being heavily outnumbered, the Ghetto held out for almost a month. When the fighting ended only few survivors managed to escape or hide. The rest were massacred. The commander of "Burning and Destruction Detachments", Jürgen Stroop, destroyed the Ghetto so completely that even building walls did not remain.
A millennium of Polish Jewish history which culminated in these tragic events is now explained in POLIN Museum, situated in the former site of Warsaw Ghetto. The museum, itself a stunning new copper and glass structure, stands in the middle of a square overlooking the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes which commemorates the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. It serves as both a centre for Jewish culture and an educational institution. Its permanent exhibition consists of the centrepiece and eight galleries, each addressing a different area in the long history of the Jewish minority in Poland. The museum’s name, Polin, which means Poland in Hebrew, derives from the legend of first Jewish settlers on Polish lands during the rule of Mieszko I (960-992). Fleeing the persecution, Jews arrived in a forest where they heard the word ‘Polin’, which sounded like the Hebrew for ‘Rest here’. The exhibition goes on to chart the arrival of the first Jewish traders and diplomats through periods where Jews enjoyed freedoms and protection not bestowed upon them anywhere else in Europe, up to the calamitous events of the 20th century.
Warsaw Rising Museum
The Warsaw Uprising, which began on the 1st of August 1944 and was fought for 63 days, was a major Second World War operation by the Polish underground resistance with the objective to liberate Warsaw from German occupation and assert Polish sovereignty before the Soviet-backed Polish Committee of National Liberation could assume control.
It was timed to coincide with the retreat of the German forces from Poland ahead of the Soviet advance. However, as the Red Army approached Warsaw, Stalin temporary halted its combat operations enabling Germans to defeat the Polish resistance and to destroy the city in retaliation. Expected help from the West never materialised, and as Soviet tanks looked on from the other side of the Wisła (Vistula) River, the full weight of the Nazi army crushed the rebellion.
Although the exact number of casualties is unknown, it is estimated that about 16,000 Polish resistance fighters were killed and about 6,000 badly wounded. In addition, between 150,000 and 200,000 Polish civilians died, mostly from mass executions. During the urban combat, approximately 25% of Warsaw's buildings were destroyed. Following the surrender of Polish forces, German troops systematically levelled another 35% of the city block by block. Together with earlier damage suffered in the 1939 invasion of Poland and during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, over 85% of the city was destroyed before the losses on the Eastern Front forced Germans to abandon Warsaw in January 1945.
The tragic events of 1944 changed forever the face of the Polish capital. The 63-day heroic struggle of Varsovians against the occupying forces during the Second World War is now documented in the Warsaw Rising Museum. Among its interactive exhibits, visitors can see “City of Ruins”, 5-minute 3D aerial film, which used old photographs and new technology to recreate a picture of the desolation of ‘liberated’ Warsaw in March 1945.
