Casting of a brick wall from the closed Warsaw Jewish Ghetto

Fiberglass casting of a segment of the brick wall surrounding the Warsaw ghetto, from the area at 51 Sienna Street, commissioned by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for installation in the museum’s permanent exhibition. The casting was taken from one of three remaining sections of the ghetto wall, which the Jewish community was forced to pay for and was built in 1940, by the German firm of Schmidt & Munstermann. Prior to the war, Warsaw was a major center of Jewish life and culture, with a Jewish population over 350,000, making it the largest Jewish community in Europe. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, occupying Warsaw on September 29. German authorities ordered the creation of a Jewish council, which was headed by Adam Czerniaków. On October 12, 1940, German authorities in Warsaw decreed the establishment of a Jewish ghetto within a specified area of the city, and required over 400,000 Jews from Warsaw and nearby towns to relocate there. The ghetto was 1.3 square miles in area, and surrounded by a guarded, ten-foot-high wall, which was topped with barbed wire. It became a closed ghetto and was sealed off from the rest of the city in November 1940. Starvation and disease were rampant, and smuggling operations occurred over the walls, via the gates, and through bordering buildings. Between July 22 and September 12, 1942, approximately 265,000 Jews were deported to Treblinka killing center, and another 35,000 were killed inside the ghetto. On April 19, 1943, organized resistance groups within the ghetto fought back against the scheduled liquidation. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising lasted a month before the German military suppressed the resistance, razed the ghetto, and transported the remaining inhabitants to forced-labor camps and killing centers.