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I remember Jewish poverty very well – when you walked those streets [in the Jewish quarter], with no sewerage, everything flowing down the gutters. Crowds of children in the courtyards.
I myself seldom went to the Jewish quarter but in 1939 I found myself there because they were bombing the Old Town and we moved to Wolynska, that’s when I saw the extreme poverty. The girls went on the street as prostitutes, the boys as thieves. On Jewish streets, Zamenhofa, Nowolipki, Smocza, Krochmalna, there were diners, cheap eateries. You could come, eat for pennies. The girls were always cruising around those busy places. That was the underworld, the demimonde, shady Jewish misery. There was a song that went like, ‘It’s raining on Smocza Street, don’t buy cigarettes there because they’re wet with rain.’ I seldom went there, you never left your neighborhood in Warsaw those days. It wasn’t like today, that you board a streetcar and go. A streetcar cost 20 groszy! That was a lot of money.
I myself seldom went to the Jewish quarter but in 1939 I found myself there because they were bombing the Old Town and we moved to Wolynska, that’s when I saw the extreme poverty. The girls went on the street as prostitutes, the boys as thieves. On Jewish streets, Zamenhofa, Nowolipki, Smocza, Krochmalna, there were diners, cheap eateries. You could come, eat for pennies. The girls were always cruising around those busy places. That was the underworld, the demimonde, shady Jewish misery. There was a song that went like, ‘It’s raining on Smocza Street, don’t buy cigarettes there because they’re wet with rain.’ I seldom went there, you never left your neighborhood in Warsaw those days. It wasn’t like today, that you board a streetcar and go. A streetcar cost 20 groszy! That was a lot of money.
Period
Location
Warsaw
Poland
Interview
Feliks Nieznanowski
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