Gallery of Decrees: The First Year of the War in Poland

 Upon exiting the “Anielewicz Home” gallery, the visitors are introduced to the beginning of World War II with photographs from the conquest of Poland and an animated map displaying the main processes of the war.

The exhibit explores the phenomenon of Jewish refugees, including those Jews who fled eastward and those who fled into Warsaw. The exhibit’s main display deals with the host of orders and regulations that were imposed on the Jews during the first year of the war, illustrating the rapid changes to their lives that occurred during this period, until their entry into the ghetto. The exhibit also displays objects and postcards from the first year of the German occupation, photographs, and the testimony of Jewish contemporaries who experienced the events first-hand.

The gallery ends at the wall of the ghetto, which the Jews were forced to enter approximately one year after the beginning of the war.