Photo report on the Varsavianist stroll at the Jewish cemetery at Okopowa Street

In the footsteps of Janusz Korczak – such was the theme of the third Varsavianist stroll, organised by the Warsaw Ghetto Museum on 11 August

The Varsavianist strolls is the Warsaw Ghetto Museum’s cyclical educational project. The stroll organised in June was dedicated to Sienna Street, where the Bersohn and Bauman Children’s Hospital is located, where in 2023 the Museum is planning to open its permanent exhibition. On its fence there are boards of the museum’s “Postcards from our Neighbourhood”. The History of Sienna and Śliska Streets” open air exhibition which was opened on 14 May. The July stroll took place at Okopowa Street where one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe is located. Around 200,000 people are buried there, including social and political activists as well as philanthropists.

On Sunday, 11 August, we set off at noon from 6 Jaktorowska Street (formerly 92 Krochmalna St.), from in front of the Museum of Warsaw’s Workshop-Korczakianum, the former building of the Orphan House [or Children’s Home], for a three-hour stroll visiting places associated with the figure of Janusz Korczak – writer, pedagogue, supporter of respect for children’s rights and their emancipation, and doctor. We went along 33 Chłodna Street – where the Orphan House [or Children’s Home] was first located in the ghetto – along 20 Chłodna Street (Adama Czerniaków’s house), near the intersection of Chłodna and Żelazna Streets (today the Footbridge of Memory installation art is located there), to 14 Waliców Street. We ended the stroll in front of the Bersohn and Bauman Children’s Hospital at 60 Sienna Street. Janusz Korczak worked there as a doctor.

Jagna Kofta, the sociologist and WGM’s educator from its Education Department talked about Warsaw’s traces of the author of “King Matt the First”.

We invite you to see the photo gallery documenting the stroll.

The next Varsavianist stroll will take place on 8 September at 1:30 p.m. It will accompany the “Uncovering Warsaw – Three Views” open-air photo exhibition.

Anna Kilian