Warszawa / Śródmieście / 122 Chmielna Street

  • Tenement building at 122 Chmielna Street, 2019, photo: Klara Jackl, POLIN Museum

  • Tenement building at 122 Chmielna Street, 2019, photo: Mateusz Szczepaniak, POLIN Museum

  • Tenement building at 122 Chmielna Street, view from the courtyard, 2019, photo: Mateusz Szczepaniak, POLIN Museum

  • Tenement building at 122 Chmielna Street, view from the courtyard, 2019, photo: Klara Jackl, POLIN Museum

  • Tenement building at 122 Chmielna Street, 1938, photo: The Municipal Office, Urban Planning Department, sign. 3314

  • Leon Leński-Eitel, photo: Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute

  • Joseph Lauer, Paris, photo: family archive, POLIN Museum

  • Cigarette case with the name „Jerzyk” engraved, owed by Jerzy Lauer, Joseph Lauer’s father, family archive, 2018, photo: Mateusz Szczepaniak, POLIN Museum

  • Guiora Joseph Lauer, Israel, 2018, photo: Józef Markiewicz, POLIN Museum

Leon Leński-Eitel

Herman Lauer, owner of a hats and tophats warehouse, purchased a tenement house at 122 Chmielna Street in 1939. The house was designed by Karol Bagieński, and there were artists, musicians (Artur and Henryk Gold) as well as singer and vaudeville actor Leon Leński-Eitel who was a friend of the Lauer family.

During the occupation, the artist looked after Herman’s grandson, Józef Lauer. When the boy was born in 1941, his parents left him under the care of his grandmother whom Mr Leński-Eitel married, most likely in an attempt to save her life. The boy spent a year on Chmielna Street. When the grandmother passed away in 1942, Leon took the boy to the countryside and left him with his sister in law, Jadwiga Eitel.

“When Eitel left me in Lipki, he gave Jadwiga a cigarette case. ‘Should anyone come to take the boy, do give him the cigarette case.’ It belonged to my father. It was supposed to prove that I was indeed Jerzyk Lauer’s son,” recalls Józef Lauer.

Leński-Eitel provided help to the Wolman family, too. Halina with her husband, brother-in-law and her mother Helena managed to leave the ghetto in the early 1943. The actor convinced his friends to provide them with a shelter and visited them in their hideouts.