Warsaw 1945–1947: The Life of Ruins and Life in the Ruins - Instytut Pileckiego

Lecture with historian and author Dr. Błażej Brzostek, whose acclaimed history of Warsaw has been widely celebrated in Poland, offering new perspectives on the Polish capital in the immediate postwar years.

Warsaw 1945–1947: The Life of Ruins and Life in the Ruins

Lecture by Dr. Błażej Brzostek

02.06, 18.00 | Pariser Platz 4A, 10117 Berlin | Registration: https://forms.gle/LUd2j65So5gpQJ3x8

How does one live in a destroyed city? How do ruins change over time, and how do new forms of everyday life emerge among rubble, provisional shelters, and overgrown landscapes of debris?

In his lecture, historian and author Dr. Błażej Brzostek — whose acclaimed history of Warsaw has been celebrated throughout Poland — opens up new perspectives on the Polish capital in the immediate postwar years. The dialectic between destruction and rebirth in a city razed to the ground, which many visitors immediately perceive in the exhibition “Warsaw’s New Beginning …”, is expanded by Brzostek into another dimension: that between nature and culture, between ending and new beginning.

Focusing on Warsaw between 1945 and 1947, Brzostek explores the unique world of life among the ruins and the complex relationship between people and their devastated surroundings. While nature slowly reclaims the ruined city, its inhabitants simultaneously attempt to rebuild everyday life amid the rubble.

Brzostek is regarded as one of the leading historians of Warsaw; his books on the Polish capital have profoundly shaped the understanding of the city’s history. His most recent book, “Wstecz,” was enthusiastically received as a “brilliantly narrated journey into the past” and a “masterful combination of history, memory, and urban space.”

Embedded link to Iwańska

Following the remarkable eyewitness conversation with Janina Iwańska, this is already the second accompanying event to the exhibition “Warsaw’s New Beginning 1945–1949. Photographs of Life in the Rubble.” Many of the responses to the exhibition so far have emphasized that it not only reveals the scale of German destruction, but above all tells the story of the people who lived, worked, and reimagined their future within this landscape of ruins.

“One sees the rebirth of human life within this absolute catastrophe left behind by the German crimes in Warsaw,” said Sven Felix Kellerhoff, senior history editor at WELT, about the exhibition.

Co-curator Katarzyna Madoń-Mitzner likewise emphasized: “The exhibition is not primarily about how thoroughly the German National Socialists destroyed the city, although that is very clearly visible. It presents the ruins as an everyday scenery of life.”

“Mountains of rubble as far as the eye can see. How could a new beginning even be possible? (...) It was the survivors who, in a sense, voted with their feet. The miracle they accomplished in the months and years that followed was captured by Polish press photographers,” wrote Uwe Rada in taz.

Cornelia Geißler noted in the Berliner Zeitung: “At the Pilecki Institute in central Berlin, one can see how Warsaw, destroyed by the Germans, came back to life. The photo exhibition is chilling.”

It is precisely this tension between destruction and reconstruction that also shapes Brzostek’s perspective on Warsaw: the simultaneity of devastation and hope, of decay and emerging order, expanded by the perspective of nature and culture.

About the Exhibition: "Warschaus Neuanfang 1945 - 1949. Fotografien vom Leben in den Trümmern"

A dance amidst the ruins of the city center.
Barefoot children play war among the burnt-out rubble of the Old Town.
A family meal inside a destroyed house.
A militiaman directing traffic at a ghostly street intersection.
A worker carrying bricks on his back to rebuild historic apartment buildings.

These images of postwar Warsaw (1945–1949) were selected from thousands of photographs preserved in the archives of the Polish Press Agency. They unfold in the shadow of the Warsaw Uprising — the largest armed underground operation in Nazi-occupied Europe — and of a city razed to the ground at the cost of up to 200,000 civilian lives.

Against the backdrop of this almost total destruction, the photographs create a collective portrait of the people of Warsaw rebuilding both their city and their lives. Through the lenses of young photojournalists, we witness the rebirth of Warsaw at close range and sense its unbroken energy.

As profound humanistic photographs, they go far beyond what is immediately visible. In expressing the unique resilience and vitality of the human spirit, they serve both as a warning against the destructive potential of totalitarian regimes and as an indictment of the free world that failed to prevent such crimes.

The Warsaw destroyed by Nazi Germany evokes associations with Aleppo, Khartoum, and Mariupol, compelling us to reflect: How can we prevent children from ever again having to play barefoot among the ruins of destroyed cities?

We are very pleased to welcome Dr. Błażej Brzostek to the Pilecki Institute Berlin as part of the accompanying program for the exhibition.

Błażej Brzostek is a Polish historian, writer, and habilitated doctor of humanities. He studied interdisciplinary humanities at the University of Warsaw, where he completed his master’s degree in history in 2001. His master’s thesis was later published in 2002 under the title Warsaw Workers: Everyday Conflicts 1950–1954. In 2002, he also earned a DEA diploma (Diplôme d’études approfondies) from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales.

Since 2005, Brzostek has been working as an academic teacher at the Faculty of History at the University of Warsaw. In the same year, he defended his doctoral dissertation on everyday life in public spaces in Warsaw between 1955 and 1970, supervised by Włodzimierz Borodziej. In 2016, he obtained his habilitation degree.

In 2022, his book Wstecz. Historia Warszawy do początku (“Backwards. A History of Warsaw up to its beginnings”) received several prestigious awards, including the Karol Małcużyński Award from the ZAiKS Authors’ Association and the Warsaw Literary Award in the category “Book on Warsaw-related topics.”