Trans Europa Day 21 Warsaw Rest Day - 0km

PART 2


My dad was born in Warsaw and grew up in an apartment building at Chlodna 20. I visited the building in 2005 and did not feel the need to revisit. That is until I read that a new illuminated footbridge had been erected in Chlodna in 2011.

Chlodna 20 still stands as it did in my father's day.. Not only is it an outstanding example of art nouveau Warsaw, but there’s also a bit of history behind it. Built in 1913 this is the former residence of Adam Czerniaków who assumed fame as head of the Judenrat (the Jewish led organization responsible for implementing Nazi orders in the Ghetto). After my father left for Australia in 1938 and when the ghetto was established in 1940, I gather the residents of the Building were evicted into the general ghetto and the building was taken over as Judenrat headquarters.

Chlodna 20 balcony

Outside Chlodna 20

One of the most recognizable images of life in the Warsaw Ghetto was that of the footbridge over Chlodna that linked the small and large Ghettos. Roughly 400,000 people (around 30 percent of the city’s population at the time) were wedged into an area that took up just 2.5 percent of the city itself and was divided into two areas with the footbridge the only link between them.

Original footbrige connecting the ghetto sections 1940-1942

There wasn’t much in the way of an official monument to mark the bridge’s former location on the street until in 2011 when the city unveiled Footbridge of Memory, an installation designed by Tomasz Tusch-Lec that is made up of two pairs of metal poles connected across the road by optical fibres. At night the fibres become illuminated and mimic the shape of the footbridge over Chlodna. During the day when the installation isn’t as striking visitors can peer through viewfinders at the base of each pole to see photographs of Ghetto life. Here's a link: New installation