Radegast train station
The Radegast train station (Polish: Radogoszcz) is a former train station in Łódź and has been a memorial to the Litzmannstadt ghetto since 2005 .
history
The Radegast station was built in 1937 as a loading station in what was then Radegast, which is now part of the Bałuty district of Łódź. After the establishment of the Lodz ghetto, this station served as the most important external transport link, as it was located just beyond the northern border of the ghetto. Initially, the station was used to transport the food and raw materials that were needed in the factories of the ghetto and to transport the manufactured goods to Germany. These were primarily things, shoes and uniforms for the German armed forces .
From 1941, the station was also used to transport people, including daily transport to the labor camps in the region around Lodz. Jews from Western Europe (Germany, Austria, Czech Republic and Luxembourg) as well as the Lodz region ( Wartheland ) were deported via Radegast to the ghetto, where they were initially needed as workers. Within one year alone (1941/42) 38,000 Jews from Central Europe and 5,000 Sinti and Roma were brought to the Litzmannstadt ghetto. In the period from January 16 to August 29, 1944, more than 150,000 Jews were finally transported from Radegast to the German extermination camps Kulmhof and Auschwitz .
The Lodz-Radegast train station was closed in the 1970s.
Radegast train station memorial
During the commemorative events in 2004 on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the closure of the ghetto and the last transport from Radegast, it was suggested that the train station be converted into a Holocaust memorial (Radegast Station Holocaust Monument). Drafts began in 2003. With the support of the Monumentum Iudaicum Lodzense Foundation and with the help of donations from Poland and abroad, the memorial was completed within two years. In 2005 a museum was opened in the former wooden station building. On August 28, 2005, Jewish survivors unveiled a memorial designed by Czesław Bielecki in the form of a tower reminiscent of a crematorium with the inscription “You shall not kill”.
A 140-meter-long "tunnel of the deportees " with the transport lists on the walls leads from the station area there, symbolizing the way to the extermination camps. Six large gravestones with the names of the extermination camps commemorate the more than 150,000 Jews who were sent to their deaths from Radegast and of whom only a few survived. A true-to-the-original train of the Deutsche Reichsbahn with three wagons stands next to the station building. The museum houses books with the lists of those who were transported from Radegast to Kulmhof and Auschwitz. According to an analysis by the University of Łódź , the memorial is visited by 36,000 people a year.
literature
- LG Kiel, November 25, 1949 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966, Vol. V, edited by Adelheid L. Rüter-Ehlermann, CF Rüter . Amsterdam: University Press, 1970, No. 184, pp. 625-636. Trial against the deputy warehouse manager Hermann Möller
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ Radegast Station . Website of the city of Łódź on the ghetto. Retrieved May 1, 2010.
- ^ The Radogoszcz (Radegast) Station, or the loading platform at Marysin Verladebahnhof Getto-Radegast Stalowa Street . Official website of the Lodz Ghetto. Retrieved May 1, 2010.
Coordinates: 51 ° 48 ′ 6.3 ″ N , 19 ° 28 ′ 50 ″ E