The embedded image is of a hiding place created from memorial stones in the Jewish cemetery located outside the walls of the Warsaw ghetto on Okopowa Street. It is the largest Jewish cemetery in the world. During the war, smugglers moved food through the cemetery to trade with starving Jews. It is estimated that more than 80,000 Jews died in the Warsaw ghetto from hunger, disease and cold. Bodies were collected on the streets of the ghetto and stacked up on carts by Jewish forced labourers and wheeled to this Jewish cemetery at the edge of the ghetto.
Because of its proximity to the Warsaw ghetto, the cemetery became a hiding place and provided shelter for Jews trying to escape the deportations, some of whom hid for months underground.
For many Jews—whether passing as “Aryan” or hiding in a secret underground bunker—much of their experience of the Holocaust was “underground,” both literally and figuratively.
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
On April 19, 1943, an uprising broke out in the Warsaw ghetto after German troops and police began to deport the remaining Jewish population there. This was the largest uprising by Jews during World War II. By May 16, 1943, the Germans had crushed the uprising and deported surviving Jews from the ghetto to concentration camps and killing centers (USHMM).