The Umschlagplatz Monument (full name: Umschlagplatz Monument-Wall) is a monument located in Warsaw at Stawki Street, in the former loading yard, where from 1942 to 1943 Germans transported over 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the death camp in Treblinka and other camps in the Lublin district.
The monument was unveiled on April 18, 1988, on the eve of the 45th anniversary of the outbreak of the Ghetto Uprising. [1] It was designed by Hanna Szmalenenberg and Władysław Klamerus. The monument has a form of a white four-metre wall with a black strip on the front wall, which is a reference to the colours of the Jewish ritual robes. The space surrounded by the wall, on a rectangular plan of 20 × 6 metres, [2] symbolizes an open railway wagon. 400 most popular Polish and Jewish names were engraved on the inner wall of the monument in alphabetical order, from Aba to Żanna. The names highlight several hundred years of coexistence of the two nations in Warsaw and the overlapping of their cultures and religions. Each name also symbolically commemorates a thousand victims of the Warsaw Ghetto. In the central part of the wall there are four stone boards with inscriptions in Polish, Yiddish, English and Hebrew that read as follows:
Between 1942 and 1943, more than 300,000 Jews from the ghetto that had been established in Warsaw went to the Nazi death camps along this path of suffering.
The gate to the commemoration area is topped with a semi-circular black matzevah-like plaque carved from a syenite block donated by the Swedish Government and society. A relief depicting a shattered forest (in Jewish funerary art, a broken tree means a premature, violent death) symbolizes the annihilation of the Jewish nation. On the axis of the wide main gate there is also a second gate – a narrow vertical clearance crowned with a cut matzevah, through which you can see a tree, which grew behind the monument after the war. The tree is a symbol of hope. The axial position of those two gates is to symbolize the transition from death to the hope of life. [3]
On the side wall of the building adjoining the monument (before the war no. 8, now no. 10) is a quotation from the Book of Job in Polish, Yiddish and Hebrew: "O earth, cover not thou my blood, and let my cry have no place." (Job 16, 18). The inscriptions intersect the contours of two windows and doors. From the edge of Stawki Street, between the main body of the monument and the school wall, runs a lightly sloping path – the road of death – where Jews were driven to the railway ramp for the transport to Treblinka. The road was paved with black basalt cubes as part of the monument.
On the back wall of the monument, the names of its creators and founders were carved. [4]
The monument is the end of the Memorial Route of Jewish Martyrdom and Struggle, unveiled on the same day, starting at the crossroads of Anielewicza and Zamenhofa Streets and leading along Zamenhofa, Dubois and Stawki Streets.
On June 11, 1999, during his seventh apostolic journey to Poland, John Paul II prayed for the Jewish nation at this commemoration place. [5]
In 2002, the monument, a fragment of a loading yard and two adjacent buildings (before the war Stawki St. 4/6 and 8, now no. 10) were entered into the register of historical monuments. [6]
In 2007–2008, the monument was completely renovated as it was in a poor condition due to the characteristics of materials used for its construction. At that time, white marble panels "Biała Marianna" were replaced with cladding made of grey granite from Zimnik, Lower Silesia, which is more resistant to weather conditions. [7] According to the design by Hanna Szmalenberg and Teresa Murak, the square around the monument was crossed by a clay-gravel path, and from the intersection of Stawki and Dzikia Streets into the square a narrow wavy strip of blue hyssop flowers (the colour of the Israeli flag) was planted. [8]
Since 2012, to commemorate the victims of the displacement from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942, the Memorial March of July 22, organized by the Jewish Historical Institute, begins at the monument. [9]
The present monument replaced the first post-war commemoration of this place with a sandstone plaque placed in 1948 on the side wall of one of the Umschlagplatz buildings (from the side of Stawki Street). It contained an inscription in Polish, Hebrew and Yiddish: [10]
From this place, in 1942 and 1943, mass murdering Nazis transported hundreds of thousands of Jews to the death camps. Hail to the memory of Jewish martyrs and fighters.
Stanisław Józef Bronisław Kasznica was the last commander of the National Armed Forces (NSZ), an anti-communist, and anti-Nazi paramilitary organization, which was part of the Polish resistance movement in World War II and in the period following it.
Józef Kostrzewski was a Polish archaeologist.
The Warsaw concentration camp was a German concentration camp in occupied Poland during World War II. It was formed on the base of the now-nonexistent Gęsiówka prison, in what is today the Warsaw neighbourhood of Muranów, on the order of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. The camp operated from July 1943 to August 1944.
Umschlagplatz was the term used during The Holocaust to denote the holding areas adjacent to railway stations in occupied Poland where Jews from ghettos were assembled for deportation to Nazi death camps. The largest collection point was in Warsaw next to the Warsaw Ghetto. In 1942 between 254,000 – 265,000 Jews passed through the Warsaw Umschlagplatz on their way to the Treblinka extermination camp during Operation Reinhard, the deadliest phase of the Holocaust in Poland. Often those awaiting the arrival of Holocaust trains, were held at the Umschlagplatz overnight. Other examples of Umschlagplatz include the one at Radogoszcz station - adjacent to the Łódź Ghetto - where people were sent to Chełmno extermination camp and Auschwitz.
The Stroop Report is an official report prepared by General Jürgen Stroop for the SS chief Heinrich Himmler, recounting the German suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the liquidation of the ghetto in the spring of 1943. Originally titled The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw Is No More!, it was published in the 1960s.
The Monument to the Ghetto Heroes is a monument in Warsaw, Poland, commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 during the Second World War. It is located in the area which was formerly a part of the Warsaw Ghetto, at the spot where the first armed clash of the uprising took place.
The Warsaw Ghetto boundary markers are memorial plaques and boundary lines that mark the maximum perimeter of the former ghetto established by Nazi Germany in 1940 in occupied Warsaw, Poland.
The Memorial Route of Jewish Martyrdom and Struggle in Warsaw is located the Muranów district to commemorate people, events and places of the Warsaw Ghetto during the German occupation of Poland.
Frumka Płotnicka was a Polish resistance fighter during World War II; activist of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB) and member of the Labour Zionist organization Dror. She was one of the organizers of self-defence in the Warsaw Ghetto, and participant in the military preparations for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Following the liquidation of the Ghetto, Płotnicka relocated to the Dąbrowa Basin in southern Poland. On the advice of Mordechai Anielewicz, Płotnicka organized a local chapter of ŻOB in Będzin with the active participation of Józef and Bolesław Kożuch as well as Cwi (Tzvi) Brandes, and soon thereafter witnessed the murderous liquidation of both Sosnowiec and Będzin Ghettos by the German authorities.
Staging Point is one of five drawings depicting the life of children in the Warsaw ghetto in the collection of the Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw. The author of the drawings is an unknown draftsman, but they are signed "Rozenfeld". The drawing was made, most probably, between autumn and winter of 1941 and commissioned as part of the Ringelblum Archive - which has been inscribed in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 1999.
The Monument to World War II Orthodox victims in Białystok is a privately funded memorial commemorating the memory of 5,000 Orthodox Christians from the Białystok region who perished in World War II and during the postwar repressions in Stalinist Poland.
Executions in the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto (1943–1944) – mass executions of Polish Political prisoners and people of Jewish descent carried out secretly by German occupiers in the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Fragments of the ghetto walls in Warsaw are fragments of the walls between properties or the walls of pre-war buildings marking the border between the Warsaw Ghetto and the "Aryan" part of the city after November 16, 1940.
Bersohn and Bauman Children's Hospital was a Jewish medical facility operating from 1878 to 1942 in Warsaw at 51 Śliska Street/ 60 Sienna Street. In 1941, a branch of the hospital was established at 80/82 Leszno Street and, after the liquidation of the so-called small ghetto in August 1942, it was moved to Umschlagplatz, to the building at 6/8 Stawki Street.
Main Judaic Library is a currently defunct library, which was gathering collections concerning Judaism and the history of Jews in Poland.
Grzegorz Bębnik is a Polish historian and an employee of the Institute of National Remembrance.
The Warsaw Ghetto Museum is a historical museum in Warsaw currently under construction.
The Żegota Monument is a stone monument dedicated to the Żegota organization, which rescued Jews during the Holocaust in Poland. It is on Anielewicza Street in Warsaw in the Muranów neighborhood of Warsaw, Poland, near the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes and the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
Rudolf Marszałek SChr was a Polish priest of the Roman Catholic Church and a member of the Society of Christ. He served a chaplain during World War II, serving in the Home Army and National Armed Forces. As a member of the military arm of the Polish Underground State, he was arrested in December 1946 by the Ministry of Public Security. After spending a year in Mokotów Prison, he was sentenced to death on January 17, 1948, and executed on March 10, 1948.
Kazimierz Gustaw Zemła is an artist, sculptor and academic. He is an author of numerous monuments, mostly located in Poland, and is one of the most recognisable sculptors of Poland.