Warsaw – Museum of Warsaw (Ministry of Justice Building)

I hadn’t realised how large the Museum of Warsaw was, so that means I’ll have to break it down a bit otherwise I’ll never get to writing about it.

This exhibit has quite a lot of emotive power, although it’s just a marble sign from 1933 which was on the Ministry of Justice building at 7 Długa Street. On 12 August 1944, it was turned into the Central Insurgent Surgical Hospital No. 1 as part of the Warsaw Uprising. When the Germans regained control of the city, they killed the 430 patients in the hospital and buried their corpses outside the building.

The sign has such huge significance now as it was one of two where friends and relatives of those missing (who had nearly all died) wrote asking for more information to try and find out what happened to their loved ones. It’s not dissimilar to the messages left at the 9/11 site in New York and a sign of the desperation that the returning population to Warsaw had in trying to find out what had happened. There’s a memorial on the building today to note the atrocities which took place here.