Pre-war tramlines on Ulica Chlodna (looking west)
 |
This photograph shows disused pre-war tramlines on Chlodna Street, which until the Second World War was one of Warsaw's busiest streets. It was also a major east-west thoroughfare, and was too important to German supply convoys to be made part of the ghetto. It was therefore walled off on both sides, dividing the ghetto into the Large Ghetto (to the north, on the right hand side of this photograph) and the Small Ghetto (to the south, on the left hand side of this photograph.) The two portions of the ghetto were linked by a wooden bridge (situated in the middle distance of the photograph) and a sort of 'level-crossing' that occasionally allowed rickshaws and horse-drawn traffic to cross from one part of the ghetto to the other.
The photograph was taken at the junction of Waliców with Chlodna. 20 Chlodna, Adam Czerniaków's house, can be seen to the extreme right.
The large cross behind the parked cars to the centre right has no connection with the Second World War. It commemorates Jerzy Popieluszko, the Catholic priest murdered by over-zealous state security officers in 1984.
 |
The Chlodna Street bridge. 'Aryan' trams, lorries and gentile pedestrians move under the ghetto bridge, while Jews cross over it