This is an interesting monument in Warsaw, Poland, marking the boundary of the Warsaw Ghetto. For more info on the most famous event of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Ghetto uprising, go here (used to have pictures but those links seem defunct). This new info comes from the Jewish Heritage E-Report (November 13, 2008) Edited by Samuel D. Gruber (see also here.)

To my surprise, I came across a new monument on ulica Bielanska, not far from the site of the (destroyed) Great Synagogue that gave me a clue about the Wall. I had not heard of this monument and it is not yet included on any map or in any guide. As it happens it is but one small part of an ambitious new project by the City of Warsaw and the Ministry of Culture in cooperation with the Jewish Historical Institute (JHI) to bring back the memory of the wall. The work is still in progress, but will be officially inaugurated at the JHI next week, on November 19th.

This project of Ghetto memory sees the city as a palimpsest - and under the lines of the new street the old patterns can still be seen - albeit faintly. 21 bronze reliefs are being installed along the route of the Ghetto wall. 13 reliefs are placed on still-extant patches of wall used as part of the Ghetto enclosure. The rest are set onto freestanding stelae. Together they mark the Ghetto border when it was at its biggest. Explanatory texts help orient the viewer. Some of these markers - the ones where no part of the wall survives - include strips of pavement labeled "Ghetto Wall" that are embedded in the surrounding pavements and give a sense of exactly where the wall once was. [This method of tracing outline of lost walls is not new (a good example is the memorial for the Orphan Boys' Home in Amsterdam, where an outline of the building in whose site is mostly covered by the new Town Hall was laid out with ceramic tiles in the surrounding pavement by artist Otto Treumann), but in Warsaw it is done very well.]

I'm very impressed by this project. It is one of the very best that I have seen anywhere that endeavors to re-orient the viewer to an historic topography rather than the contemporary one. For Jewish sites this type of evocation of lost places is essential, since throughout Europe so much of Jewish culture is lost, destroyed and built over. The Warsaw project demonstrates that there are ways that are both aesthetically and didactically satisfactory - that these lost places and spaces can be recalled, if not actually recovered. The effort to create and install a system of distinct but related markers is important. Whether for the Ghetto Wall, or for (re)locating Jewish communal institutions or any other set of sites, a system indicates that recovered sites were not individual, casual or accidental creations, but were part of a complex network of places and community now gone. This technique can work with any kind of lost heritage, not just Jewish. But for Jewish heritage - especially in cities once full of Jews where few physical remains survive - markers are a must.

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