The Israeli writer Etgar Keret, whose ancestors died in Poland during the Holocaust, will be its first tenant. Keret is an interesting character in himself.
The son of a Polish Jew who spent 3 years of the war hiding from the Germans in a compartment under the floor of a Warsaw house, Keret sees this project as an ‘external eye’ on Warsaw and its cultural landscape.
The location of the home is significant because it is on what was the border between the large and small ghettos of WWII Warsaw. The building can be found perched between a Communist era block and a pre-war tenement which is meant as a comment on the neighborhood’s divided past.
‘The buildings were not touching each other which is symbolic of the ignorance during the Communist period’ says Szczęsny.
[All images by Andreas Meichsner for New York Times]