Site of the Main Jail of the Warsaw Ghetto/ Miejsce Aresztu Centralnego Getta Warszawskiego

Overview

POLIN Museum of the History of the Polish Jews

POLIN Museum is located on the site of the former Crown Artillery Barracks, which stood here from 1784 to 1965. Before the Second World War, the building served as a military prison. During the Warsaw Ghetto, it housed the Main Jail and, from August 1942 to April 1943, the headquarters of the Jewish Council. First executions of Jews sentenced to death for leaving the ghetto without a permit took place here in November 1941. During and after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Nazi German occupiers shot captured Jews and Polish political prisoners in the barracks’ courtyard. In the summer of 1943, it became part of the KL Warschau concentration camp (known as ‘Gęsiówka’), where Jewish prisoners were forced to demolish houses in the burnt-out ghetto. After the war, a penal labour camp operated on the site.