Anielewicz House: The Jews of Warsaw before the War

This gallery depicts the everyday life of the Jewish community of Warsaw during the first half of the twentieth century, as seen through the windows of the home of Mordechai Anielewicz. The walls of the house “vanish” during the visit, and visitors are surrounded by panoramas on every side.

Each window focuses on a different realm of life of Warsaw’s Jews and the Anielewicz family, who lived in a poor neighborhood in Warsaw: culture, artistic expression, and Jewish religious life in Warsaw; education and the youth movements; the texture of city life in Warsaw; and a special window devoted to the Jewish town, the “Shtetl.”

Above the panoramas, original films from before World War II are screened to the sound of Jewish music. The gallery displays large maps of Europe depicting the Jewish communities of the continent on the eve of World War II.

The gallery’s organizing principle stems from the thinking of Abba Kovner, who sought to commemorate the magnificent Jewish world as it existed prior to the war, before it was destroyed in the Holocaust: