The article outlines a very specific research proposal to write the history of objects related to Warsaw’s Northern District (Muranow), and the history of its residents from the 18th century to the present day. A recent turn towards things, and towards materiality in the new humanities, and a turn towards topography all serve as a methodological inspiration here. Things and artifacts will be treated as particular kinds of witnesses of historical experience, but this will require re-defining the term “witness” and broadening categories of subjectivity and agency. In this article the author divides this history into two scenes: a bright history of things (up to the outbreak of World War II), and a dark history of things (the period of the ghetto and the Holocaust), focusing on the latter. Relating to testimonies written there and then, he traces a shift in perceiving the presence of things in the space of human experience. The basic determinant of this shift is moving underground, which is coherent with changes in the experience of ghetto inhabitants, who ultimately, during the uprising and at the climax of the liquidation of the closed district, literally went underground. For this reason, the main area of indepth research is underground Muranow: during the war, immediately after it, and throughout its entire post-war period. Muranow things stay under the ground, at times, however, they come to the surface due to some activities, either accidental or deliberate (building new houses, renovations of streets and pavements). Muranow things have also been excavated and professionally described in a systematic and organized manner by archeologists during excavations carried out when the edifice of the POLIN Museum was being raised. Selected artifacts will be presented within the exhibition “Here is Muranow” at this very museum
