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.

• 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
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• 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

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.

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.

• 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

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.

Michał Weichert, a lawyer, but also an avant-garde director and theatre theoretician, lived at 8a Długa Street from the mid-1930s. A figure of great merit for the history of Yiddish and Polish theatre, he founded the Young Theatre (Yung-Teater).

Originally hailing from Galicia, the Polish territory partitioned by Austria-Hungary, Weichert settled in Warsaw only in 1918, as a mature man of 28. He came to the capital after a stay in Berlin, where he studied under the supervision of the famous director Max Reinhardt, a theatre reformer.

In Warsaw, he had an intensive career as a publisher and director, as well as a pedagogue. From the early 1920s, Weichert organised experimental acting studios in the capital, the first Jewish acting schools of their kind. Their graduates formed the core of the Yung-Teater in 1932, which Weichert was director of until 1939.

One of the seats of the Yung-Teater was located nearby, at 19 Długa Street, almost opposite 26 Długa Street, another building that is part of this series of Unseen.

• Jewish Theatre in Poland: Fragments of an Illustrious History // on Culture.pl
• Jung Jidysz // bio on Culture.pl
• Where is Poland? // a multimedia guide about the era 1795-1918 when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was partitioned by three neighbouring empires
• 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

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.