Pawiak a społeczność żydowska okupowanej Warszawy 1939-1944
Pawiak Prison and the Jewish Community of Warsaw under Nazi Occupation (1939-1944)

Summary/Abstract: The prison compound located between Dzielna, Pawia and Więzienna streets, the co-called Pawiak, served as the central German prison in Warsaw in the years 1939-1944. During that time, some 100,000 inmate passed through Pawiak, many of them Jews. The Jews of Pawiak can be divided into several groups. The first group were those incarcerated in Pawiak even before the Warsaw ghetto was closed, for ordinary offences, including the failure to wear an arm band with the Star of David on it. The second group were hostages, arrested based on lists of names, who typically found themselves there due to the social positions held, including those arrested in connection with the so-called Kott Case, and a group of intellectuals of Jewish origin who were arrested during campaigns directed against Polish intelligentsia. The third group were Jews holding passports of the United States and Latin American countries, interned in three groups between April and July 1942. This group could also include 400 former residents of Hotel Polski, brought to Pawiak in July 1943, more than 300 of whom were executed in the vicinity of the prison. Probably the largest group of Pawiak’s Jewish inmates were those imprisoned there for staying illegally on the „Aryan” side, including Emanuel Ringelblum, the architect of the underground Warsaw Ghetto Archives, executed in March 1944.

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