Hotel Polski

In 1944 during the Warsaw Uprising the building housed a Polish insurgent stronghold called the "Holy Mother Redout", named after a painting located there.

[5] Collaborators spread the rumor that Jews holding foreign passports of neutral countries were allowed to leave the General Government, and that documents from countries such as Paraguay, Honduras, El Salvador, Peru and Chile, in the names of Jews who were no longer alive, were sold (at high prices, estimated in extreme cases to equal over a million US dollars) in Hotel Royal at 31 Chmielna street, and later at Hotel Polski.

[10] Hotel Polski became a gathering place for Jews who hoped they would soon be allowed to leave Nazi-occupied Europe, as rumors also suggested it would be safe ground.

[5] Starting May 21 1943, Jews from Hotel Polski were transferred in small groups by Nazi German authorities to Vittel, a spa resort town in German-occupied France, which was supposed to be their transit point; later transports only made it to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.

[10] By September 1943, the Germans revealed that most of the documents of the individuals in the transit camps were forged, and the South American governments refused to recognize most of the passports.

[4] The Hotel Polski victims included poet Itzhak Katzenelson, Yiddish novelist Yehoshua Perle, and Jewish resistance leader Menachem Kirszenbaum[4] as well as, probably, Polish dancer Franceska Mann.