Gallery 8 | Großaktion Warschau

This gallery tells a story of horror. The story of the blockades, hunting for people in their apartments and on the streets of the ghetto, the feeling of acute hopelessness, entrapment, and desperate attempts to hide or to obtain a permit to stay in the ghetto.

What was life for a community of 400,000 people, whose only goal for weeks and months on end was to avoid assault, violence and death in the street? The Umschlagplatz is the most poignant symbol of the horror that struck during the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. The gathering of deportees in that small, enclosed space and the crimes committed there evoke images that carry a powerful emotional charge and have enormous power of expression. They symbolize the transition from life (albeit brought low) to death.

This part of the gallery will bring the visitor closer to the events of the summer of 1942. Transports from the Umschlagplatz to Treblinka death camp are the final touch of the gallery.