ADDRESS: 23/25 Nowy Świat Street
OPENING DATE: unknown
The café was located at the Pasaż Italia [Italia Passage]. It was set up by the students of the Wyższa Szkoła Handlowa, (Today the Warsaw School of Economics (TN).) as a café – winery with a beer garden. During the war, the place was visited mainly by the youth, who loved to listen to the jazz band led by the black conductor George Scott. Scott’s band was famous for its charismatic patriotic pieces, which were entangled in the repertoire and most waited for by the guests.
WSPOMNIENIA
About the place
In “Bodega” George Scott’s orchestra played and Hanka [Hanna] Chmurkowska sang. Despite the contradicting opinions about Scott, it was a fact that in the melody of the tangos, waltzes and rumbas, pieces of national songs and even the national anthem could be heard. It was nice and carefree in “Bodega” at Nowy Świat, as in the old days, but the curfew broke the fun.
Roman Dziewoński, DODEK Dymsza, Wydawnictwo LTW, Dziekanów Leśny 2010.
From the uprising
I'm walking past a German tank, the company is cheerful of course, and the Germans are shooting photos and filming. A black man is sitting on a turret, playing an accordion […]. I remember the café that was there, “Café Bodega” in Czech, in the Simonsa Passage, and he [that black man] run a flower store there, with the German permission. We knew that his name was George Scott. Mr George Scott is sitting on the turret and playing lively tunes on the accordion. Those two moments: the dying Wolf and the Negro playing for the Germans the lively melody of Rose Marie or something like that.
Janusz Skrzycki, recording from the archives of the Warsaw Uprising Museum.
