Warsaw Ghetto

The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all the Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Europe during World War II. It was established by the German authorities in the Muranów neighborhood of the Polish capital between October and November 16, 1940; within the new General Government territory of German-occupied Poland. There were over 400,000 Jews imprisoned there, at an area of 3.4 km2 (1.3 sq mi), with an average of 9.2 persons per room, barely subsisting on meager food rations. From the Warsaw Ghetto, Jews were deported to Nazi concentration camps and mass-killing centers. In the summer of 1942 at least 254,000 Ghetto residents were sent to the Treblinka extermination camp during Großaktion Warschau under the guise of "resettlement in the East" over the course of the summer. The ghetto was demolished by the Germans in May 1943 after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprisings which had temporarily halted the deportations. The total death toll among the Jewish inhabitants of the Ghetto is estimated to be at least 300,000 killed by bullet or gas, combined with 92,000 victims of rampant hunger and hunger-related diseases, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the casualties of the final destruction of the Ghetto.
Mordechai Anielewicz

Mordechai Anielewicz was the leader of the Jewish Fighting Organization, which led the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; the largest Jewish insurrection during the Second World War, which inspired further rebellions in both ghettos and extermination camps. His character was engraved as a symbol of courage and sacrifice, and to this day his image represents Jewish resistance during the Holocaust.
Warsaw Uprising

The Warsaw Uprising was a major World War II operation, in the summer of 1944, by the Polish underground resistance, led by the Home Army, to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. The uprising was timed to coincide with the retreat of the German forces from Poland ahead of the Soviet advance. While approaching the eastern suburbs of the city, the Red Army temporarily halted combat operations, enabling the Germans to regroup and defeat the Polish resistance and to raze the city in reprisal. The Uprising was fought for 63 days with little outside support. It was the single largest military effort taken by any European resistance movement during World War II.
War crimes in occupied Poland during World War II

It's estimated that over six million Polish citizens, divided nearly equally between ethnic Poles and Polish Jews, perished during World War II. Most were civilians killed by the actions of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and their respective allies. At the Nuremberg Tribunal, three categories of wartime criminality were established: waging a war of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. These three core crimes of international law were set apart from other crimes, and for the first time since the end of the war categorised as violations of fundamental human values and norms. They were committed in occupied Poland on a tremendous scale.
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany's final effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to Majdanek and Treblinka concentration camps. After the Grossaktion Warsaw of summer 1942, in which more than a quarter of a million Jews were deported from the ghetto to Treblinka and murdered, the remaining Jews began to build bunkers and smuggle weapons and explosives into the ghetto. The left-wing Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) and right-wing Jewish Military Union (ŻZW) formed and began to train. However, only the ŻZW received logistical support from the similarly right-leaning Polish Home Army. A small resistance effort to another roundup in January 1943 was partially successful and spurred the Polish groups to support the Jews in earnest.
Bombing of Warsaw in World War II

The Bombing of Warsaw in World War II refers to the bombing campaign of Warsaw by the German Luftwaffe during the siege of Warsaw in the invasion of Poland in 1939. It also may refer to German bombing raids during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. During the course of the war approximately 84% of the city was destroyed due to German mass bombings, heavy artillery fire and a planned demolition campaign.
Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg

Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. He served in World War I; and postwar in the Freikorps Oberland and the Steirischer Heimatschutz. He served as SS and Police Leader of the Warsaw area in German occupied Poland from 1941 until 1943 during World War II.
Castle Square, Warsaw

Warsaw's Castle Square is a historic square in front of the Royal Castle – the former official residence of Polish monarchs – located in Warsaw, Poland. It is a popular meeting place for tourists and locals. The Square features the landmark Sigismund's Column to the south-west, and is surrounded by historic townhouses. It marks the beginning of the bustling Royal Route extending to the south.
Załuski Library
The Załuski Library was built in Warsaw in 1747–1795 by Józef Andrzej Załuski and his brother, Andrzej Stanisław Załuski, both Roman Catholic bishops. The library was the first Polish public library, the largest library in Poland, and one of the earliest public libraries in Europe.
Krasiński Palace

The Krasiński Palace Polish: Pałac Krasińskich, or Palace of the Commonwealth Polish: Pałac Rzeczypospolitej, is a baroque palace in Warsaw, Poland, on Krasiński Square.
National Library of Poland

The National Library of Poland is the central Polish library, subject directly to the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.
Nazi crimes against the Polish nation

Crimes against the Polish nation committed by Nazi Germany and collaborationist forces during the invasion of Poland, along with auxiliary battalions during the subsequent occupation of Poland in World War II, consisted of the systematic extermination of Jewish Poles and the murder of millions of (non-Jewish) ethnic Poles. The Germans justified these genocides on the basis of Nazi racial theory, which depicted Jews as a constant threat and regarded Poles and other Slavs as racially inferior Untermenschen. By 1942 the Nazis were implementing their plan to kill every Jew in German-occupied Europe, and had also developed plans to eliminate the Polish people, through mass murder, ethnic cleansing, enslavement, and assimilation into German identity of a small minority of Poles regarded as racially valuable. During World War II the Germans not only murdered millions of Jewish and non-Jewish Poles, but ethnically cleansed millions more ethnic Poles through forced deportation, supposedly to make room for racially superior German settlers.
Old Town Market Place, Warsaw
Warsaw's Old Town Market Place is the center and oldest part of the Old Town of Warsaw, capital of Poland. Immediately after the Warsaw Uprising, it was systematically blown up by the German Army. After World War II, the Old Town Market Place was restored to its prewar appearance.
Polish culture during World War II
Polish culture during World War II was suppressed by the occupying powers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, both of whom were hostile to Poland's people and cultural heritage. Policies aimed at cultural genocide resulted in the deaths of thousands of scholars and artists, and the theft and destruction of innumerable cultural artifacts. The "maltreatment of the Poles was one of many ways in which the Nazi and Soviet regimes had grown to resemble one another", wrote British historian Niall Ferguson.
Berlinka (art collection)

The Berlinka ('Berliner'), also Pruski skarb, is the Polish name for a collection of German original manuscripts originally kept at the Prussian State Library in Berlin, which since the end of World War II are held by the Jagiellonian Library in Kraków. The legal status of the documents is subject of an ongoing debate.
History of Warsaw
The history of Warsaw spans over 1400 years. In that time, the city evolved from a cluster of villages to the capital of a major European power, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth—and, under the patronage of its kings, a center of enlightenment and otherwise unknown tolerance. Fortified settlements founded in the 9th century form the core of the city, in today's Warsaw Old Town.
Pabst Plan

The Pabst Plan was a Nazi German urban plan to reconstruct the city of Warsaw as a Nazi model city. Named after its creator Friedrich Pabst, the Nazis' "Chief Architect for Warsaw", the plan assumed that Warsaw, the historical capital of Poland and a city of 1.5 million inhabitants, would be completely destroyed and rebuilt as a small German town of not more than 130,000 inhabitants.
List of Polish cities damaged in World War II

As the German army retreated during the later stages of the Second World War, many of the urban areas of what is now Poland were severely damaged as a result of military action between the retreating forces of the German Wehrmacht and advancing ones of the Soviet Red Army. Other cities were deliberately destroyed by the German forces. One of the most famous of these planned destructions was the razing of Warsaw, the capital of Poland. While extensively damaged by the failed Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and Warsaw Uprising, the city later underwent a planned demolition by German forces under order from Adolf Hitler and high officials within the Nazi government. On 17 October 1944, SS chief Heinrich Himmler famously stated, "The city must completely disappear from the surface of the earth and serve only as a transport station for the Wehrmacht." Before they were stopped by the advancing Red Army, 85% of the city had been taken out. Warsaw was far from the worst off after the Nazi retreat; 97% of Jasło and 100% of Polanów were reduced to rubble. Other towns such as Wałcz fared better, with only a quarter of the city being destroyed. Ancient historical buildings in Polish cities were not spared; for example, Trzemeszno's Romanesque basilica of 1130-45 was burnt down in 1945.
Krasiński Library

Krasiński Library was a library in Warsaw, founded in 1844. During the German invasion and occupation of Poland, part of the building was destroyed and its collections were stolen, redistributed, or burned. Its surviving collections are now at the National Library of Poland.