Warsaw Ghetto Memorial
The Monument to the Ghetto Heroes , officially monument of the Ghetto Heroes ( Polish Pomnik Bohaterów Getta ), was commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising erected.
First memorial
After the suppression of the uprising, only burned-out ruins of the Warsaw ghetto remained , and they too were razed to the ground by the Germans. In 1946 the first memorial was erected in the middle of the rubble - a round stone slab, set horizontally in the ground level, based on the design of the architect Leon Marek Suzin. It was unveiled on April 16, 1946.
Second memorial
In 1947, the Jewish sculptor Nathan Rapaport, who was born in Warsaw, in collaboration with Leon Marek Suzin, designed a cenotaph in its current form from Swedish labradorite blocks , which were intended by Reich Minister Albert Speer to be used as a monument to victory. The unveiling took place on April 19, 1948.
The memorial consists of an eleven meter high stone stele with a bronze group of sculptures in the middle, flanked by two bronze menorahs . Mordechaj Anielewicz can be seen as the central figure . A copy of the group of sculptures is in the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem . On the back of the stele is a bas-relief depicting the procession of the Holocaust victims.
The memorial gained worldwide media coverage in December 1970 when Warsaw fell on its knees .
Museum of the History of Polish Jews
In the immediate vicinity of the memorial, on Willy-Brandt-Platz, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews was built between 2009 and 2014 based on a design by the Finnish team of architects Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Oy, Helsinki.
The museum building was designed on the plan of a square. The glass outer walls are torn by irregular gaps that correspond to the curved galleries with corrugated concrete walls inside the museum building. The outside and inside world are seamlessly connected.
The museum was partially opened on April 19, 2013 with a celebration to mark the 70th anniversary of the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; the complete completion and grand opening took place on October 28, 2014.
See also
literature
- James E. Young : The Texture of Memory. Holocaust Memorials and Meaning . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993, pp. 155-184.
Web links
Coordinates: 52 ° 14 ′ 59 ″ N , 20 ° 59 ′ 38 ″ E