Mauzoleum Walki i Męczeństwa (Warsaw)
The Memorial of Struggle and Suffering (Polish: Mauzoleum Walki i Męczeństwa ) in Warsaw is located at Aleja Szucha 25 in the basement of the former Gestapo headquarters during the occupation of Warsaw by German troops in World War II . Those who were imprisoned, tortured and murdered at the time are now remembered in the former prison.
history
The memorial was installed in the basement of a monumental ministry building, which was built from 1925 to 1930 according to a design by Zdzisław Mączeński in the modernist style. In the interwar period, the Ministry of Religious Confessions and Public Education / Enlightenment was located here ( Ministerstwo Wyznań Religijnych i Oświecenia Publicznego ).
During the occupation of Warsaw by German troops, the headquarters of the Gestapo and the SS security service of the Warsaw district were set up in the facility. The street name was changed to Police Street . In the basement of the left (southern) wing, the former archive and magazine store of the Ministry of Education was converted into a remand prison. Isolation cells, interrogation rooms and torture chambers were created.
Inmates were usually brought in by transfer from Pawiak Prison . These prisoners - mostly Polish - were interrogated in the Gestapo offices above or in the basement wing. Various torture methods were used: beatings, kicks, dog bites, choking (also with the use of gas masks), burns (with cigarettes), breaking bones, pulling out fingernails and "water treatments" (drowning). Loud radio music drowned out the cries of the tortured. Several thousand prisoners were executed in the cellar itself or in nearby farmsteads (including in the ruins of what is now the Prime Minister's State Chancellery). The bodies were cremated in the basement of building 12/14; after the war human ashes weighing 5.6 tons were found here. During the Warsaw Uprising , the building remained under German control.
After the war, the street was initially renamed Aleja I. Armii Wojska Polskiego . In the building that drew the Ministry of Education , later Ministry of Education called a. The former Gestapo cellar was treated as a cemetery in the post-war years, and little was changed. In 1952 the Museum of Polish Martyrdom (Polish: Muzeum Martyrologii Polskiej ) was opened here. It was based on a design by Franciszek Krzywda-Połkowski. In the 1960s, the more than 1,000 inscriptions in the cells (initials, names, pseudonyms, calendars, prayer texts, requests to notify relatives) were secured and deciphered.
Memorial today
The memorial, now in the Polish Ministry of Education and Sports, on the street now again known as Aleja Szucha , is designed as a museum.
It was provided with modern, multimedia means of communication. It essentially consists of a cell corridor with 10 isolation cells, which have been preserved in their original state and contain original inscriptions and bullet holes. There are also four communal cells in which prisoners had to wait for interrogation. In these cells the chairs are arranged in two rows one behind the other, which led to the name “tram”. The room of the person on duty was reconstructed according to statements from detainees.
The memorial belongs to the Warsaw Independence Museum .
See also
literature
- Julius A. Chroscicki and Andrzej Rottermund: Architectural Atlas of Warsaw , 1st edition, Arkady, Warsaw 1978, p. 50.
- Małgorzata Danecka, Thorsten Hoppe: Discover Warsaw. Tours through the Polish capital , Trescher Verlag, ISBN 978-3-89794-116-8 , Berlin 2008, p. 175.
- Grzegorz Piątek, Jarosław Trybuś: Warsaw. The thematic guide through Poland's capital , Kamil Markiewicz (Uebers), ISBN 978-3-89728-070-0 , Schröder, Verlag für Regionalkultur, Diepholz 2009, p. 122 f.
- Janina Rukowska: Travel Guide Warsaw and Surroundings , 3rd edition, ISBN 83-217-2380-2 , Sport i Turystyka, Warsaw 1982, p. 90 f.
Web links
Coordinates: 52 ° 13 '2.6 " N , 21 ° 1' 24.5" E