Unseen Soundwalks – Details, episodes & analysis

The largest synagogue ever built in Poland.

The Great Synagogue was built between 1876 and 1878 according to a design by Leandro Marconi. Warsaw’s largest Jewish temple housed an impressive 2,200 seats.

The grand opening took place on 26th September 1878 and was attended by many guests, including the city authorities. The sermon, in Polish, was delivered by Isaac Cylkow, rabbi and translator of the Hebrew Bible into Polish.

The Great Synagogue was quickly recognised as one of the landmarks of the capital. It was the only synagogue that was marked on the general plans of Warsaw, alongside palaces, churches and other characteristic points of the city, and was recommended by tourist guides to the capital. 

The synagogue was located on the border of the Jewish quarter. Sermons were preached there in Polish, and attended mainly by wealthy Jews who were assimilated into Polish culture.

However, it was enough to take a few steps away from the temple to find yourself at the heart of the Yiddish-speaking centre of Warsaw.

How to listen:

Unseen is available as a downloadable podcast, although it is best experienced through the Echoes geolocative storytelling app available for iOS and Android. After loading the app, search for soundwalks in Warsaw and you’ll find Unseen.

Further reading:

• Landscape with a Synagogue: The (Un-)Lost Tradition of Polish Synagogue Architecture // on Culture.pl

• Hebrew Works Differently: An Interview with Author & Translator Julia Fiedorczuk // on Culture.pl

• 10 Places You Will Never Visit in Warsaw // on Culture.pl

• Heaven’s Gates: Wooden Synagogues in the Territories of the Former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth // book profile on Culture.pl

• 9 Illustrious Synagogues You Can Visit in Poland // on Culture.pl

• 8 Remarkable Yiddish Books from Poland // on Culture.pl

• From ‘Last Sunday’ to ‘Last Shabbos’: Poland’s Legendary Jewish Tangos// on Culture.pl • The Lost World of Yiddish Films in Poland // on Culture.pl

• The Rise & Fall of Polish Song // on Culture.pl

An address where the Jewish and Polish worlds met and intermingled. 

Pasaż Simonsa (Simons’ Passage) owes its name to the German industrialist and building’s owner Albert Simons. The building complex consisted of two sections. The first part started being used in 1903, and construction as a whole was completed in 1906.

The first building was in the shape of an arc that ran from Długa 50 to Nalewki 2. It was a grandiose five-storey edifice with a large number of windows, which was very modern for its time. The second one, built deep into Nalewki Street, was given the address Nalewki 2a.

Today, this place is part of Krasiński Garden, which was enlarged after the war. Number 2a was, as the writer Moshe Zonshayn put it, ‘a Jewish kingdom’, as it was here that many Jewish political (but also cultural and sporting) organisations found their headquarters at various times.

From the beginning, the Pasaż building served a variety of functions; it was a shopping mall, an office building and a hotel. There were also numerous shops offering a wide range of goods and services.

The building was located in the heart of Jewish Warsaw, where one of its most important and best known thoroughfares and its symbol, Nalewki Street, began (today a section of the former Nalewki is called Stare Nalewki).

Among the Jewish organisations that operated at this address, it is worth mentioning the sports clubs: the Zionist Makabi and the socialist Morgnsztern. They not only had their offices here, but also gyms for various sporting sections. The Warsaw branches of both clubs had more than a thousand members by the end of the 1930s.

The future hero of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Michał Klepfisz, father of the contemporary American-Jewish poet Irena Klepfisz, was active in Morgnsztern as a student.

The building was destroyed as early as September 1939 and was located outside the ghetto walls. During the Warsaw Uprising, an insurgent redoubt was located in the building at 2a Nalewki Street. On 31st August 1944, the building was bombed and around 300 people died under the rubble. After the war, the ruins were demolished.

How to listen:

Unseen is available as a downloadable podcast, although it is best experienced through the Echoes geolocative storytelling app available for iOS and Android. After loading the app, search for soundwalks in Warsaw and you’ll find Unseen.

• Be Strong and Brave: Jews, Sport, Warsaw // book profile on Culture.pl

• On Their Own Terms: The Warsaw Ghetto & Its Heroic Uprising // on Culture.pl

• Unseen Soundwalks: Warsaw Rising ‘44 // the previous season of this audiowalk

• 8 Remarkable Yiddish Books from Poland // on Culture.pl

• From ‘Last Sunday’ to ‘Last Shabbos’: Poland’s Legendary Jewish Tangos// on Culture.pl 

• The Lost World of Yiddish Films in Poland // on Culture.pl

• The Rise & Fall of Polish Song // on Culture.pl

Slated to close in the summer of 1944, by mid-July the Germans started to evacuate the camp, although by the time the Uprising started there were still around 400 inmates, mostly non-Polish Jews from across occupied Europe.

Storming the Gęsiówka camp was no easy task. The whole prison was surrounded by guard towers and bunkers, all armed to the hilt. The insurgents used a captured Panther tank – dubbed “Magda” – to initiate the attack by firing at the towers.

This was followed by the assault. After the tank had forced through the barricade and broken through the entry gates, insurgents then used the cover of heavy fire to storm the camp.

Some 348 prisoners were freed, including 24 women. 89 prisoners had Polish citizenship, the rest were Jews from Hungary, Greece, Holland, Belgium, France and Czechoslovakia. A vast number of the freed prisoners joined the continuing fight against the Nazi occupiers during the Uprising, assisting the Home Army insurgents in the Old Town.

How to listen:

Unseen is available as a downloadable podcast, although it is best experienced through the Echoes geolocative storytelling app available for iOS and Android. After loading the app, search for soundwalks in Warsaw and you’ll find Unseen.

In mid-August 1944, over 300 people died in one of the most tragic episodes of the Uprising when a radio-controlled vehicle carrying half a tonne of explosives blew up after Poles thought they had seized it.

On the morning of the 13th of August 1944, the Germans launched an assault on the Old Town from their positions at the nearby Castle Square.

At 0900 hours, a tracked vehicle, what seemed to be a tank, started crawling up Podwale Street towards the maze of streets which make up Warsaw’s oldest district, an insurgent stronghold at the time. Combatants threw molotov cocktails at the tank, forcing its driver to escape from the resulting fire.

Insurgents found no weapons in the vehicle but they did notice a radio device of sorts. Nobody was allowed near the tank until a sapper had checked it out, although before a technician managed to inspect the vehicle, at around 1600 hours two soldiers claiming to be under direct orders from the Polish command climbed into the tank and started to drive it into the insurgents’ territory, towards the Old Town.

A huge crowd gathered to celebrate the capturing of the German tank, and a makeshift victory parade assembled along the street. The resulting blast ripped into nearby buildings and tore its way through the jubilant spectators…

How to listen:

Unseen is available as a downloadable podcast, although it is best experienced through the Echoes geolocative storytelling app available for iOS and Android. After loading the app, search for soundwalks in Warsaw and you’ll find Unseen.

It’s 1730 hours on the 26th of March 1943. Operation “Meksyk II”, commonly known as Operation Arsenal, has just got under way…

Commander Stanisław Broniewski, codename “Orsza”, has given the order to attack a Nazi prisoner transport vehicle. It’s carrying Jan Bytnar, codename “Rudy,” from Gestapo heaquarters to nearby Pawiak prison.

However, with the original plan going up in smoke, the Polish contingent has to think fast. They end up storming the van, led by “Rudy”’s comrade in arms, Tadeusz Zawadzki, codename “Zośka”, managing to release around 20 prisoners, including “Rudy”.

While the event did not happen during the Warsaw Uprising itself, Operation Arsenal remains one of the most well-known events undertaken by the Polish underground during World War II and is a testament to the Polish determination to set themselves free from Nazi German domination.

How to listen:

Unseen is available as a downloadable podcast, although it is best experienced through the Echoes geolocative storytelling app available for iOS and Android. After loading the app, search for soundwalks in Warsaw and you’ll find Unseen.

The Bank of Poland building was a temporary fortification for the insurgents during the first month of the Uprising, but the Polish underground had already been at work here long before… 

During the Nazi occupation, the building’s function didn’t change, and became a Bank of Issue for the Nazi Germans’ General Government. A number of the bank’s Polish employees also worked with the underground, secretly passing on information about transports of money, leading to one of World War II’s largest heists against the occupiers.

During the Uprising, insurgents managed to storm the bank on the 3rd of August. However, due to its tactical position in between the Old Town and Warsaw’s centre, the Germans fought intensely to try and regain the building.

Bloody fighting went on for four weeks straight, with the occupiers even managing to get inside the building a number of times before being fought off again by the Polish Home Army.

It wasn’t until the 1st of September that the last remaining insurgents evacuated the building and escaped to Warsaw’s downtown through the city’s sewer system.

How to listen:

Unseen is available as a downloadable podcast, although it is best experienced through the Echoes geolocative storytelling app available for iOS and Android. After loading the app, search for soundwalks in Warsaw and you’ll find Unseen.

This monolithic building, which used to stretch all the way to Marszałkowska Street, housed a number of important organisations before being destroyed by German bombing in early September 1944.

Apart from housing the Polish Home Army headquarters, the PKO building also had a sanitary point which was later converted into a field hospital, providing beds and sanitation for up to 400 wounded combatants at a time.

The building was so large it also accommodated a POW holding centre for Germans taken captive following the storming of the PAST building on Zielna Street. Meanwhile, the building’s third floor played host to the “Błyskawica” – or “Lightning” – insurgent radio station.

How to listen:

Unseen is available as a downloadable podcast, although it is best experienced through the Echoes geolocative storytelling app available for iOS and Android. After loading the app, search for soundwalks in Warsaw and you’ll find Unseen.

Napoleon Square, now called Warsaw Uprising Square, was one of the most central points downtown during the 63 days of fighting.

In the first few hours of the struggle against the Nazi occupiers, insurgents stormed the Prudential building and hung the Polish white-and-red flag from its roof, making it visible from all parts of the city.

The main post office, which stood where the National Bank of Poland is now, was also a key target for the combatants.

In the last days of August and into September, the Germans started to intensify their air raids and artillery fire throughout the city. The Prudential building was an easy target, and on the 28th of August it was hit by a 600 mm heavy calibre 2-tonne shell fired from a Karl-Gerät mortar. Despite the immense damage, the building did not collapse, and still stands to this day.

How to listen:

Unseen is available as a downloadable podcast, although it is best experienced through the Echoes geolocative storytelling app available for iOS and Android. After loading the app, search for soundwalks in Warsaw and you’ll find Unseen.

The PAST building was one of the most important buildings in Warsaw for the German Nazi occupiers. 

The telephone exchange housed inside the building was a communications nerve centre for the Nazi war effort on the Eastern Front, which by late 1944 was moving ever closer to Poland’s capital.

The storming of the PAST was one of the most spectacular events during the 63 days of the Warsaw Uprising: almost 40 Germans were killed, while 120 were taken prisoner. On the Polish side, only around a dozen or so combatants died.

Among the seized loot was a large ammunitions stash, which provided a strong morale booster following the successful siege. The strategic building and its surroundings remained in Polish hands until the end of the Uprising.

How to listen:

Unseen is available as a downloadable podcast, although it is best experienced through the Echoes geolocative storytelling app available for iOS and Android. After loading the app, search for soundwalks in Warsaw and you’ll find Unseen.

When the Warsaw Uprising broke out in August 1944, Aleje Jerozolimskie was under constant German fire, and crossing the street was a deadly undertaking…

It was here that a barricade was built in the first days of the Uprising to provide an essential communications corridor between the north and south parts of the city centre held by the Home Army.

In the opening days of the Uprising, insurgents got to work, digging out a trench between number 22 on the north side to number 17 on the south side.

Once completed, the barricade was used by messengers and runners, as well as the civilian population. From a logistical standpoint, the barricade on Jerusalem Avenue was used as a corridor to transport weapons, ammunition, food supplies, as well as for transporting the wounded and providing a safe passage for field post.

How to listen:

Unseen is available as a downloadable podcast, although it is best experienced through the Echoes geolocative storytelling app available for iOS and Android. After loading the app, search for soundwalks in Warsaw and you’ll find Unseen.