Touring the Warsaw Ghetto Area

The Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

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Built between 1638 and 1731, this Baroque church was used as a political prison during the partitions of Poland. Situated inside the ghetto, it became the parish church for the Jewish converts to Catholicism incarcerated there. It is said that tunnels connected the church with the outside world, and that they were used to smuggle food in and Jews out. Whatever the truth, nothing but good is said of the priest who ran the church. Today however the church contains very little mention of its wartime parishioners, almost all of whom died. By the end of the war churches were the only buildings standing in certain parts of the former ghetto.