Aerial comparison of Warsaw 1939-2010 with a special reference to the Warsaw Ghetto and Umschlagplatz.

WWII Warsaw Ghetto area in gray colour - burnt down

2010

Before WWII - area of Umschlagsplats as Military Secret (covered in the photo).

Just after WW II area of Umschlagsplatz. The rest of the ghetto wall is seen at Stawki Street.

The same area in Warsaw in 2010. The area of Umschlagsplatz is outlined.

http://www.google.com/intl/sv/earth/explore/showcase/historical.html#warsaw

http://www.wwii-photos-maps.com/warsawaerialphotosnewname/
Man kan numera färdas bakåt i tiden med historiska bilder i Google Earth - Aerial comparison.
Jag tittade på Warszawa, min hemstad och rös när jag såg hur den har förändrats med tiden.

The top picture shows Warszawa in 1945. That means after the Warsaw uprising that began on 1 August 1944. It is easy to discern the grey areas in the picture; there are almost no buildings. The grey area is, more or less, the area of the former Jewish ghetto.

1. Umschlagplatz - reloading point. During the Grossaktion Warsaw, beginning on July 22, 1942, Jews were deported in crowded freight cars to Treblinka. On some days as many as 7,000 Jews were deported.

The Umschlagplatz was created by fencing off a western part of the Warszawa Gdańska (Danziger Banhof) freight train station that was adjacent to the ghetto. The area was first surrounded by a wooden fence, was later replaced by a wall. Railway buildings and installations on the site as well as a former homeless shelter and a hospital were converted to the prisoner selection facility.

2. Trains from Umschlagsplats were heading east through the bridge on Wisla river to Treblinka.

3. Church in Warszawa ghetto.

4. The area there my mothers hous was standing until Luftwaffe bombing in September 1939.

5. The latest location of Janusz Korczak Orphanage in Warszawa. From here entire Orphanage was deported through Umschlagsplatz to Treblinka.

6. Old City in Warszawa.

"Es gibt keinen jüdischen Wohnbezirk in Warschau mehr!" wrote in May 1943 gen. Stroop in his documentation.
"The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw is no more!"
265,000 Warsaw Jews were taken to the Treblinka gas chambers, and some sources describe it as the largest killing of any single community in World War II. The deportations ended on September 12, 1943.

Three pictures from the bottom show a close-up of the Umschlagplatz area.
In the bottom picture is a view of the area now. The house in the middle of the Umschlagplatz area was a former school building at Stawki 4-6 (for 3 primary schools) and was turned into a Jewish Hospital. The front of the hospital building and half of Stawki Street, surrounded by the wall, were functioning as a "day Umschlagsplatz". In case there were delays (in German killing logistics), the victims were crowded in the "Umschlagplatz night" until the empty freight trains arrived back from Treblinka. Back yard was a complex of Stawki school/hospital building (Stawki 4-6) and another school building at Stawki 8, where the school year 1939 was supposed to be the first one....
All the school buildings survived WWII.

My grandparents, Gabriel Rozental and Helena Rozental, went here. Janusz Korczak, Stefa Wilczynska, and hundreds of children went here. The list of our family that went this way is about 120 people.

In 1942, 265.000 Warsaw Jews were taken through Umschlagplatz to cattle cars and transported to Treblinka and murdered in gas chambers.

View of the Umschlagplatz area year 1945. Stawki school/hospital building (Stawki 4-6) on the right and another school building at 8 Stawki, where the school year 1939 was supposed to be the first one.... On Stawki Street, one can see the remnants of the wall surrounding the Umschlagplatz. The area with 3 trees was so so-called selection area (S), and behind the wall, visible in the picture, it was the deportation area (D) with numerous railway tracks.