Rat-Infested Alleys & Rotting Tenement Houses: Exploring Szczepan Twardoch’s Depiction of Warsaw

ulica_wolynska_w_dzielnicy_zydowskiej_nac_.jpg, default, Wołyńska Street in Warsaw’s Jewish quarter, with a delivery van and a gas lantern visible in the frame, 1925-1937, photo: Grażyna Godziejewska / Narod

#language & literature

If you took a photo of pre-war Warsaw from space, you would notice two patches competing for your attention: the light enveloping the elegant part of the city and the shadowy cloud hanging over the Jewish district. In close-up, this contrast would become somewhat blurred, but the viewer’s eye would focus on a few distinctive points.

My street, divided by a wall

Text

The Northern District, with the stink of its street gutters, the smell of cholent on Friday, and its undoubted filth was the only homeland he had, and he was incapable of giving this homeland up

Author

Trans. Sean Gasper Bye

– observes the narrator of Szczepan Twardoch’s novel The King of Warsaw. For the protagonist, Jakub Szapiro, Jewish Warsaw, dotted with rotting tenement houses and muddy courtyards, is a ‘Little Jerusalem’, a tamed, familiar space, and a constant point of reference. It contrasts with the Warsaw of elegant establishments, well-lit streets, and clean sidewalks. ‘This wasn’t my city, an invisible barrier like an ocean cut my city off from here’, says the narrator [all the quotations from The King of Warsaw are taken from Sean Gasper Bye’s translation, ed.]. The characters in The King of Warsaw repeatedly cross this mental and topographical boundary, thus shaping the novel’s narrative map. How much does Twardoch’s literary map have in common with the real Warsaw of the 1930s?

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The Warsaw Ghetto, 1940, photo: National Digital Archives / szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl

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In Twardoch’s novel, space is subject to constant selection. It’s the setting of – perhaps it even gives rise to – fictional events, which are nevertheless inspired by real figures and the chronicle of events from the interwar period. The writer embellishes (or, in this case, rather brutalises) them, adapting them to the authorial concept. He brilliantly portrays a divided capital, Polish and Jewish, conflicted and bilingual, juxtaposing the centre with the periphery. In this way, he goes beyond a purely artistic vision, creating a bridge between fiction and reality. Jakub Szapiro attempts to seize successive fragments of the territory, subjugating them, which in the language of geopoetics – or, put simply, the study of the interaction between literature and geographical space – is called mapping.

However, as much as the 1937 Warsaw of The King of Warsaw can be conquered, in its sequel, Królestwo (The Kingdom), space limits or hinders the protagonists’ actions. The division between Polish and Jewish cities is nullified. The borders, invisible before the war, now become the borders of the ghetto, and places that, until recently, were vibrant and full of life are dead. Warsaw, which does offer refuge, must nevertheless be fought for. We witness its decline, analogous to the decline of Szapiro’s power. The narrative of Królestwo now belongs partly to Ryfka (a secondary character in The King of Warsaw), who wanders through rat-infested alleys in search of food. The dynamic of the first novel is stifled in the second one, with the action shifted more to the registers of memory and flashback. Since fragments of the city’s topography are described in detail, it is possible to reconstruct, at least in part, Warsaw’s transformation, recreate its atmosphere, and treat it as a protagonist in its own right: a dark and mysterious heroine, simultaneously attractive and repulsive, volatile and unpredictable. Let’s take a closer look at her nooks and crannies.

The right side glowing with neon, the left side submerged in darkness

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Facade of the ‘Pod Gigantami’ (‘Under the Giants’) house, 36 Ujazdowskie Avenue, Warsaw, 1930, photo: Grażyna Godziejewska / National Digital Archives / szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl

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The Warsaw of 1937 takes on a distinct shape already through the snapshot descriptions of the route traveled by the characters in The King.... If once ‘the famous comedian Adolf Dymsza drove his Lancia Farina down Ujazdowskie Avenue, President Moscicki drove the king of Romania down Ujazdowskie Avenue in his Cadillac 370’, then ‘two miles away were the slums of impoverished Polish and Jewish neighborhoods, spawning all their offspring’. We read that the red Chrysler belonging to one of the novel’s key characters ‘would park [...] in front of the decaying tenements of Muranów district and the rented apartment houses of Wola district, where rotting wood ceilings sagged under the weight of their tenants’, and ‘[m]uddy puddles were reflected in its chrome bumpers’.

There are many more such contrasts in Twardoch’s diptych novel. Several places deserve a more careful reading, supplemented by historical facts.

The Municipal Cinema

Near the spot where the ghetto wall would bisect Warsaw a few years later, the first scene of The King... takes place. At the Municipal Cinema (Kino Miejskie) at the corner of 25 Długa Street and 8 Hipoteczna Street, a boxing match for the capital’s team championship is underway between Legia and Makabi. In Twardoch’s novel, it’s more than just sporting rivalry – rather, it’s a symbolic clash, a demonstration of the respective power of Poles and Jews, the two groups sharing the city:

Text

Those two Warsaws were gathered around the ring, speaking two languages, living in separate worlds, reading different newspapers, showing one another indifference at best, hatred at worst, but usually just remote disdain, as though they lived not on neighboring streets but an ocean apart.

Author

Trans. Sean Gasper Bye

Raised in 1900, the building, designed by Feliks Stępiński, was originally home to Warsaw’s operetta company, the Teatr Nowości [‘Novelty Theatre’, ed.]. Lucyna Messal, a legend of the Polish operetta scene and Warsaw’s darling, made her debut in the theatre’s hall, whose auditorium holds up to 1,300 spectators. When the former theatre company was disbanded in 1921, the building was rebuilt to house the Wojciech Bogusławski Theatre. Five years later, the auditorium was converted into a cinema. The Municipal Cinema was destroyed during the Warsaw Uprising, and the surviving walls were demolished in 1961.

Nalewki Street

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Nalewki Street in Warsaw, 1939, photo: Tadeusz Łuniewski / National Digital Archives / szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl

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One of the most important streets in interwar Warsaw, the heart of the Jewish district. Its name came from the Bełcząca River, nicknamed Nalewka by residents who used it to obtain water [as the name in Polish comes from ‘nalewać’ – ‘to pour’, trans.]. Interwar photographs of the street depict poverty and opulence, street vendors and the unemployed, Orthodox Jews, long-bearded elderly men, and students rushing to classes, likely at the nearby Kryński High School.

At the intersection of Długa and Nalewki Streets stood the Simons Passage – a shopping complex that was also home tothe Makabi sports club. Two addresses are key in Twardoch’s novel: 26/6 Nalewki Street was the home of the Bernsztajn family, and at 40 Nalewki, Szapiro ‘was at home, in Little Jerusalem’. In one of the final scenes of The King..., the characters gaze upon the burning district. After the war, the street was renamed Bohaterów Getta Street [‘Heroes of the Ghetto’, ed.]. What remained of the old Nalewki Street were a few cobblestones and tram tracks leading to nowhere.

Sobenski’s snack bar

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The widening of Gen. Karola Świerczewskiego Avenue in Warsaw (with the House of Dissidents visible in the centre of the frame), 1961, photo: National Digital Archives / szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl

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Text

Buddy Kaplica had been sitting, since seven in the morning, at his table in Sobenski’s little snack bar at 22 Leszno Street, next to the Protestant church

Author

Trans. Sean Gasper Bye

– we read in The King of Warsaw. Hot, kosher pasties and coffee awaited the gang leader, who would meet with his associates at a place owned by ‘a firmly assimilated Jew who didn’t go to synagogue at all’. The character of Kaplica was based on a pre-war gangster, Łukasz Siemiątkowski, known as Tata Tasiemka. Similarly, Radziwiłek was modelled after Doctor Łokietek. And Sobenski?

Warsaw guide Rafał Dąbrowiecki found three businesses operating at this address in a pre-war commercial register: Wacław Skupieński’s ‘Rokitnianka’ and the businesses of Bernard Eksztejn and Wiktoria H. Pumpiański. A photo taken in 1940 depicts the signboard of a pasty parlour, though not Sobenski’s, but Chmielewski’s. This tenement house no longer exists, but you can visit the neighbouring parish, which Twardoch’s novel also refers to. The building of the so-called House of Dissidents was demolished in the 1950s and rebuilt about 20 meters north of its original location due to the widening of the former Leszno Street after the war. The current address of the parish is 76a Solidarności Avenue.

The famous ‘number thirteen’

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The intersection of Tłomackie, Leszno, and Przejazd Streets, 1934, photo: Adam Jankowski / National Digital Archives / szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl

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‘The fame of the “number thirteen” went beyond the borders of the country’, recalled Jewish writer Zusman Segadłowicz, adding that 13 Tłomackie Street became a well-known address to which ‘some sent letters full of blessings, others – full of abuse’. This was the headquarter of the Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists, established in 1916 and commonly known as ‘Buda’. According to Segadłowicz, the spacious premises hosted artistic events, lectures, and discussions around books and social issues. Foreign guests came to the lectures, and the association’s café was a meeting place of Jewish painters and theatre artists.

This important point on the cultural map of the Jewish Warsaw is also mentioned by the novel’s protagonist. He arrives at 13 Tłomackie, at the Metropol, located on the ground floor of a tenement building. ‘The Metropol was a small bar, run by Wolf Handszer, and the place was now officially called the New Metropol, since the old one, which had belonged to the Bund, had gone bankrupt in 1933’. This is confirmed by press articles from that period. A few months earlier, Nowiny Codzienne (The Daily News) reported that the bar had been sealed by the sanitary commission after several pairs of old shoes were found under the counter, and in the room where the appetisers were prepared, ‘a plethora of cockroaches of all species, breeds, and sizes was discovered’. The building was destroyed during the war.

The Great Synagogue

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The Great Synagogue in Tłomackie Square, photo: Jewish Historical Institute

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The Great Synagogue at 7 Tłomackie Square, described in The King..., also ceased to exist during the war:

Text

On Tuesday evening, the Jewish streets of Warsaw emptied of people completely; buses and streetcars ran empty, all the observant Jews had gone to synagogue for Kol Nidre […]. Men would stand with Torah scrolls to the left and right of the cantor, who would sing in Aramaic about the vows we would make for the whole year between this Yom Kippur and the next.

Author

Trans. Sean Gasper Bye

On 16 May 1943, the synagogue was blown up by the Germans, marking the final act of the liquidation of the Jewish quarter. Today, the Blue Skyscraper stands on this site, three floors of which are rented by the Jewish Community of Warsaw.

Simon & Stecki

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Simon and Stecki winery, Warsaw, 38 Krakowskie Przedmieście Street, 1937, photo: National Library Polona

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Adria, Bagatela, Cristal, Oaza, Szwajcarska, Ziemiańska… These and other establishments form a distinct, colourful chapter in the history of interwar Warsaw. Twardoch’s novel couldn’t have done without this theme either. Kaplica and his men visit Sobenski’s pasty parlour every day, but the May Day holiday requires a more exclusive setting.

Text

So they normally had lunch either at the Hotel Bristol or Simon & Stecki’s. They ate the most expensive lobster, crayfish, and oysters, telling the waiters to demonstrate how to eat them elegantly and joking that here was the working class, enjoying the most exquisite luxuries through the mouths of its representatives.

Author

Trans. Sean Gasper Bye

The address of Simon and Stecki’s restaurant was known to all Warsaw residents and visitors, and only the high prices deterred them from visiting this fashionable spot. Famous figures, such as Nałkowska, Kuncewiczowa, and Rudnicki, as well as Franc Fiszer – a legend among the philosophy and cabaret circles – to name a few, sampled the fresh oysters and exquisite wines at 38 Krakowskie Przedmieście Street. It’s no wonder that in The King..., it’s in this restaurant that unofficial decisions at the ministerial level are made. The winery, which had been operating since 1825, later turned into a restaurant, closed during the war.

In Królestwo, the setting changes. Wartime Warsaw, divided by the walls of the ghetto, is given a bit of colour by Casanova’s dance halls, the Arizona and Colombina nightclubs, established in the square where the bombed Bajka tenement house once stood, as well as a shady café in Nowiniarska Street, ‘where there was a telephone through which various business dealings with the Aryan side were conducted’, [trans. MP] and, finally, Café Hirschfeld at the corner of Sienna and Sosnowa Streets, where Dawid, the novel’s second narrator, buys a plate of barley soup with part of his smuggling earnings.

Kercelak

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Trading in Kercelego Square (Kercelak) in Warsaw, 1927, photo: Adam Jankowski / National Digital Archives / szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl

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‘A small town with a life of its own’ – that’s what people would say of Kercelak, the famous marketplace of pre-war Warsaw. On the map, it resembled an inverted letter ‘P’ and stretched along Okopowa Street (from the intersection with Wolska and Chłodna Streets) to Leszno Street. In the square, essentially comprised of a maze of wooden stalls separated by narrow alleyways, one could buy everything: from tripe and meatballs to one’s own bicycle stolen earlier that day. In The King..., Twardoch depicts the place as follows:

Text

He said hello to everyone: the woman selling potatoes and beets; the aspiring storekeeper; the stall owner with suits for twenty złotys [a tailored suit from Zaremba cost about 180 złoty – ed.]; the Jewish junk dealer; and the beggar whose only items for sale were three pairs of women’s stockings, almost new, which he hung over his forearm and shook as if he thought that might attract someone willing to give him a zloty […].

Author

Trans. Sean Gasper Bye

The flourishing trade must have attracted thieves and extortion money collectors. Like the merchant gripping the stockings, it was Tata Tasiemka’s gang that had a grip on the entire marketplace. The author of Królestwo brilliantly portrays contemporaneous shady practices, making Kercelak the centre of the literary underworld. During the war, counterfeit Kennkarte [German identity cards which the Nazis used to identify Jews, ed.] were sold there. Food was smuggled from Kercelak into the nearby ghetto. Although the place is now defunct, its legend lives on – for example, a mini-Kercelak is created during the periodic fair in Wola.

The Mirowska Market

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Stalls in front of the Mirowska Market in Żelaznej Bramy Square, Warsaw, 1935, photo: Adam Jankowski / National Digital Archives / szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl

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The narrator of Królestwo relates that the areas around Chłodna Street, the Mirowska Market, and Żelaznej Bramy Square ‘cut into the ghetto with the long tongue of Aryan Warsaw’ [trans. MP]. It’s in the (western) Mirowska Market – which, before the war, constituted the largest commercial facility in the city along with its twin eastern market (after the war converted into a bus depot and later the Gwardia sports hall) – that Dawid, Szapiro’s son, learns the art of smuggling. The marketplace surrounding the two buildings was like a separate entity. The well-planned layout of the stalls created narrow aisles filled with the bustle of Polish and Jewish merchants. A hierarchy was established among the vegetable vendors, at the very top of which were women selling inside the market halls, while the lowest tier was comprised of street vendors carrying goods in wicker baskets. During the Nazi occupation, the square found itself right on the edge of the ghetto. The halls burned down during the Warsaw Uprising, and despite the initial plan to demolish the remaining walls, they were eventually rebuilt. Trade returned to the Mirowska Market in the 1990s.

Zaremba’s tailor shop

Mojsze Bernsztajn describes his first visit to the famous Zaremba’s tailor shop as follows:

Text

It was a typical Warsaw August morning. On Nalewki it smelled of cholent, everywhere else it smelled of mignonettes. Tadeusz Zaremba’s tailor shop was located at 52 Koszykowa Street, in one of the beautiful apartment houses on this stylish street that, indeed, smelled of mignonettes.

Author

Trans. Sean Gasper Bye

For the protagonist of The King..., fitting and buying a suit is a kind of initiation, a wild card into the unknown world of luxury. ‘I was a different person, my first time dressed this way, in a suit, glistening shoes, a white shirt, and a black tie, looking like a big shot’. The word for ‘big shot’ Twardoch uses, ‘puryc’, is an old term for a wealthy and influential man. Twardoch’s linguistic stylisation further enhances the novel’s authenticity and allows the reader to delve deeper into the realities of interwar Warsaw.

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Zrobione własnoręcznie: Pracownia Krawiecka Zaremba

Zaremba’s tailor shop is a family business, whose history dates back to 1894. Initially, it was located in the Grand Theatre building, then in Hoża Street (from 1922), Wspólna Street (from 1927), and Koszykowa Street (from 1933). Apparently, only one customer was ever refused – the singer Kiepura, who wanted a suit ‘for tomorrow’. The studio burned down during the Warsaw Uprising, but Tadeusz Zaremba opened a new one in Jerozolimskie Avenue. Since 1956, the company has operated at 15 Nowogrodzka Street and enjoys a solid reputation to this day.

Ryfka’s brothel

Whenever the members of the Warsaw gang disappeared for a few hours, they were most likely to be found on the third floor of a tenement building at the intersection of Piusa XI Street (today’s Piękna Street) and Koszykowa Street, among ‘half-naked girls in see-through slips [and] short tulle capes’. It’s already in The King… that the brothel’s owner, Ryfka Kij – about whom Stanisław Grzesiuk sang the song ‘Rum Helka’ – establishes herself as a strong woman (aptly conveyed by the charismatic Magdalena Boczarska, who portrays her in the TV series adaptation of the novel). AndKrólestwo, it’s her story that guides the reader through the ‘rat paths’ of the ruins of Warsaw. This is how Ryfka describes her demolished tenement house:

Text

The turret with the shiny dome, the balconies, the roof, all destroyed. Nothing left. During the day, you can see through the window the remnants of the wallpaper I helped put up in my room, but at night, you can’t see a thing.

Author

Trans. MP

Warsaw University of Technology

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Warsaw University of Technology, 1925, photo: National Digital Archives / szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl

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Text

We are now hiding on the top floor of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering […] a few hundred meters from where the tenement house stood, a beautiful tenement house at the corner of Piusa and Koszykowa Streets […]. The walls are there, but the walls were never important, only the content that filled them,

Author

Trans. MP

reveals Ryfka, who, along with Jakub Szapiro, escapes from the ghetto to the Aryan side. In the first novel, we read about the ghetto benches, that is, designated seats in lecture halls meant for students of Jewish origin. In the second volume, we see the consequences of discrimination and indifference. The titular kingdom has fallen, the comfortable abode reduced by the war to a pile of rubble.

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The intersection of Świętojerska and Nalewki Streets in the former heart of Warsaw’s Jewish Quarter, destroyed by the Nazis in 1943, photo: Henry N. Cobb, 1947, source: History Meeting House press materials

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Henry N. Cobb, The crossing of Świętojerska and Nalewki Street (Jewish district), Warsaw, 1947, photo: press materials DSH

The Warsaw University of Technology was also damaged. Founded in the first half of the 19th century, the university operated under the name of the State Higher Technical School during the German occupation. It suffered the most during the Warsaw Uprising. After the war, the devastated country needed qualified engineers and professionals, so the university was quickly rebuilt to once again fill its walls with content.

Sources: Paweł Otręba, ‘Mały Izrael: Obraz Warszawy w “Królu” Szczepana Twardocha’ (Little Israel: The Image of Warsaw in Szczepan Twardoch’s “The King of Warsaw”’, [in:] Media i Społeczeństwo (Media and Society), no. 11/2019; kurier-warszawski.pl; warszawaetnograficzna.pl, butempowawie.pl, warszawa1939.pl

Translated from Polish by Michał Pelczar

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