The kibbutz Yad Mordechai is named after Mordechai Anielewicz, a leader of the Hashomer Hatzair movement in Warsaw and the commander of the Jewish Fighting Organization during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. His story is a thread along which the museum traces the community of Warsaw until its annihilation. Emphasis is placed on the Jews of Warsaw, since they constituted the largest and most important Jewish community in Europe, and also on the Warsaw Ghetto, the largest ghetto in the territories occupied by the German Reich.

 

There are four components to the permanent exhibit – Anielewicz House, which portrays Warsaw Jewry before the War, The Gallery of Decrees that describes the decrees promulgated against Jews during the first year of occupied Warsaw, A Model of the Warsaw Ghetto, which depicts the story of the ghetto as told by a video projected onto the model, and A Recreation of a Command Bunker at 18 Mila St.

 

The Anielewicz House gallery depicts everyday life of the Jewish community of Warsaw during the first half of the twentieth century, as seen through the windows of the home of Mordechai Anielewicz. Each window focuses on a different realm of life of Warsaw’s Jews and the Anielewicz family, who lived in a poor neighborhood in Warsaw: The gallery displays large maps of Europe depicting the Jewish communities of the continent on the eve of World War II. The gallery’s organization stems from the thinking of Abba Kovner, who sought to commemorate the Jewish world as it existed prior to the war and before it was destroyed in the Holocaust.

 

The exhibit Gallery of Decrees explores the phenomenon of Jewish refugees, including Jews who fled eastward and those who fled into Warsaw. The exhibit’s main display deals with the numerous orders and regulations imposed on the Jews during the first year of the war, and illustrating the rapid changes that occurred to their lives during this period, until their entry into the ghetto. The gallery ends at the wall of the ghetto, which the Jews were forced to enter approximately one year after the beginning of the war.

 

In a Model of the Warsaw Ghetto, video mapping is projected onto the model, depicting life in the Warsaw Ghetto from the day of the closure of its surrounding walls until its liquidation in May 1943. You will see everyday life in the ghetto and the measures taken in preparation for the armed resistance planned for the day the Germans would attempt to liquidate the ghetto.

 

The Command Bunker at 18 Mila St. is a recreation of the main command bunker of the Jewish Fighting Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa – ZOB) in the ghetto.