Miła 18

The Anielewicz Bunker, at the corner of ulica Miła and ulica Dubois in Warsaw's Muranów district, was the last refuge of the Jewish Combat Organization's command staff during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Originally a shelter beneath a building destroyed in 1939 and used by the Jewish underworld, it initially offered better living conditions than the rest of the ghetto, with running water, electricity, and recreation rooms. When the headquarters staff relocated here in April 1943, the number of occupants rose to around three hundred as refugees arrived from other destroyed hideouts. Conditions deteriorated dramatically as a result of extreme heat, lack of space, and oxygen shortages, while the occupants lived in complete darkness for days. On May 8, 1943, German and Ukrainian troops surrounded the bunker. After demands for surrender were rejected and poison gas was pumped in, the remaining fighters, including their commander Mordechai Anielewicz, took their own lives collectively rather than fall into enemy hands. Because no exhumations took place after the war, the site, which was later filled in, is now considered a mass grave, and because of the parallels to the siege of Masada it is often called the "Warsaw Masada."

Today the site is commemorated by Anielewicz Mound, built in 1946 from the rubble of the surrounding buildings. At its top stands a memorial stone inscribed in Polish, Hebrew, and Yiddish, recalling the death of the commander and his comrades in the fight against the occupiers. In 2006 the grounds were redesigned and a small pyramid-shaped obelisk was placed at the foot of the mound. This monument bears a detailed inscription describing the bunker's history as a symbol of the will to live of Warsaw's Jewish population, and lists the names of 51 identified fighters. The motif of a destroyed forest, which also appears at the Umschlagplatz Monument, is taken up again here. The mound has been registered as a cultural heritage site since 2008. At this quiet spot, you can reflect on the history of the resistance and the tragedy of the Warsaw Ghetto, while the original address, Miła 18, is now occupied by an apartment block at a different point along the street.