Mirow, Muranow, and Wola

The quiet streets of Mirów and the adjoining Muranów district—now primarily a residential neighborhood—once housed the largest Jewish population in Europe: about 380,000 people in 1939. The Nazis sealed off this area from the rest of the city on November 15, 1940, and the congested ghetto became rapidly less populated as people died from starvation and disease. The ghetto encompassed parts of the adjoining district of Wola as well. Between July and September 1942, the Nazis deported about 300,000 Jewish residents to the death camp at Treblinka. On April 19, 1943, the remaining inhabitants instigated the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Children threw homemade bombs at tanks, and men and women fought soldiers hand to hand. In the end, almost all of those remaining died in the uprising or fled through the sewers to the "Aryan side" of Warsaw.