Warszawa 1981 - The consequences of history: views of a razed and rebuilt city
by Alberto Landi
portfolio shortlisted call 'URBANAUTICA INSTITUTE AWARDS 2021', 2021
Category: Anthropology and Territories
On September 1, 1939 the German Wehrmacht invaded Poland and massed 400.000 Polish Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto to implement the Final Solution planned by the Nazis. Most of them were deported and assassinated in the Treblinka extermination camp.
On April 19, 1943, the remaining Jews launched the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which ended a month later without survivors.
The Warsaw Uprising took place in 1944 by the Polish Resistance. At the end the Germans expelled the rest of the population and razed Warsaw to the ground as act of revenge.
Only then the Soviet Red Army entered the ruins of Warsaw and liberated the city.
About 85% of the city had been destroyed. At the end the number of deaths of the Warsaw population killed by the Germans was 600,000, of which 400,000 were Jews.
After the war, a part of the Old Town was rebuilt, but above all, new socialist urban projects and a large scale prefabricated housing plan were carried out, until the fall of the communist regime in 1989.
These images tell the story of that time.