During renovation work in a pre-war tenement building in Warsaw’s Saska Kępa district, a concealed wartime archive has come to light, discovered under the floorboards of an otherwise empty flat. The find, now described as of “immense historical merit,” includes documents from the high command of the Armia Krajowa (Home Army), blank German-occupation forms, wartime maps, underground Polish-language newspapers published abroad, and personal items such as identity cards, photographs and a diary written by a young woman whose identity remains unknown.

What makes the discovery particularly remarkable is the survival of high-ranking resistance materials in a private hiding place, something that was rarely preserved through the war and post-war decades. 

Experts from the Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego (Warsaw Rising Museum) are now preparing provenance studies and conservation work, with the archive to be transferred to a museum deposit for thorough inventorying and preservation.

The mayor of Warsaw has called the revelation “sensational,” emphasising its potential to reshape our understanding of life under occupation and the underground resistance’s operations. 

Historians say that materials such as these detailing day-to-day survival, covert organisation, and personal experiences may deepen public awareness of Warsaw’s wartime memory.

Photo: X @1944pl

Tomasz Modrzejewski