| Monument Name: | Anielewicz Bunker |
| Native Name: | Bunkier Anielewicza |
| Location: | Warsaw, Poland |
| Designer: | Hanna Szmalenberg and Marek Moderau (obelisk); Unknown (commemorative stone) |
| Material: | Granite |
| Begin: | 1946 |
| Complete: | 1946, 2006 |
The Anielewicz Bunker (Polish: Bunkier Anielewicza), also known as the Anielewicz Mount (Polish: Kopiec Anielewicza) was the headquarters and hidden shelter of the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB), a Jewish resistance group in the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland during the Nazi German occupation of World War II.
In October 1940, the governor of Nazi German-occupied Warsaw ordered city officials to begin construction of a ghetto for Jews in an area of Warsaw formerly used for quarantine during epidemics; it was completed on 15 November 1940. The initial population of Jews confined to the ghetto was 400,000. All windows, doors, and other exits to the rest of Warsaw were bricked up. From July to October 1942, over 310,300 Jews were removed from the ghetto, for transport to concentration camps or due to death.[1]
From 17 April 1943 to 18 May 1943, SS Brigadefuehrer Jürgen Stroop reported to SS-Obergruppenfuehrer and General of Police Krueger that 56,065 of the remaining Jews of the Warsaw ghetto were deported to death camps or exterminated by gunshot, explosion, fire, or asphyxiation.
The bunker at Miła 18 was initially constructed by a group of Polish partisans and armed underground resistance fighters against the Germans.[2] They were joined there by the ŻOB fighters after their hideout, at 29 Miła Street, had been discovered.[3]
On 8 May 1943, three weeks after the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when the bunker beneath 18 Mila Street was found by the Nazis, there were around 300 people living there. The bunker had six exits.
From the Stroop Report, 7 May 1943:
The armed resistance fighters surrendered, but the ŻOB command, including Mordechaj Anielewicz, the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, stood firm. The Nazis threw tear gas into the shelter to force the occupants out. Anielewicz, his girlfriend Mira Fuchrer and many of his staff committed mass suicide by ingesting poison rather than surrender, though a group of about 30 eluded the SS by escaping through the only un-blocked door of the six. They crawled through the Ghetto through a sewer until able to emerge near Prosta Street to the "Aryan side" of Warsaw on May 10, 1943.[4] [5]
From the Stroop Report, 8 May 1943:
In July 1945, survivors of the Jewish Underground (among them Simcha Rotem) visited the ruins above the former ZOB command bunker.[6] The ruins were not built over, so as "not to disturb what is recognized as a grave site by the Jewish community".
In 1946, the monument known as Anielewicz Mound, made of the rubble of Miła Street houses, was erected. A commemorative stone inscribed in Polish and Yiddish was placed on top of the mound.
In 2006, a new obelisk designed by Hanna Szmalenberg and Marek Moderau was added to the memorial. The inscription in Polish, English and Yiddish reads:
The names of 51 Jewish fighters whose identities have been established by historians are engraved on the front of the obelisk.
Non-invasive surveys confirming subsurface evidence of the bunker and tunnel systems were carried out in 2021 by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists.[7]
The current numbering of the buildings on Mila Street does not correspond to the wartime numbering. The memorial is now located at the intersection of Miła and Dubois Streets while the current Miła 18 is an apartment block about 700 metres to the west.