Obj. ID: 33309
Memorials Umschlagplatz Monument in Warsaw, Poland, 2008
Memorial Name
Umschlagplatz Monument-Wall
Who/What is Commemorated?
Jews deported from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka and elsewhere
Description:
The monument is located at Stawki Street, in the former loading yard. It is located at 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.
The monument is defined by a white three-meter wall with a black strip on the front, though the original marble facing has been replaced by a slightly darker stone. The original design was meant to recall a tallit (Jewish prayer shawl). The encircling wall creates an interior space open to the sky on a rectangular plan of 20 × 6 meters.
The entrance to the interior commemoration area is surmounted by a semi-circular relief carving on a black matzevah-like syenite block donated by the Swedish Government. The relief depicts a shattered forest (in Jewish funerary art, a broken tree means a premature, violent death), symbolic of the destruction of Warsaw’s Jewish population.
On the axis of the wide main gate, there is a second opening – a narrow vertical space crowned with a matzevah, through which you can see a live tree which was already growing on the site, and around which the architect designed the monument. The tree is a symbol of hope. The axial position of those two gates allows the transition from despair (cut forest) to hope of life (living tree).
Inside, low permanent stone benches are against each wall, recalling the seating in an old prayer hall. Or perhaps these are meant to be low seats to allow mourners to “Sit shiva” in the customary Jewish manner. During commemorative ceremonies, the bench in front of the wall of names is filled with flowers. Some people place memorial stones.
The 400 most popular Polish and Jewish first names are engraved on the inner wall of the monument in alphabetical order, from Aba to Żanna. The names highlight several hundred years of coexistence of Jews and Christians in Warsaw. Each name of the 400 names also symbolically commemorates a thousand victims of the Warsaw Ghetto. In the central part of the wall there are four stone tablets with inscriptions in Polish, Yiddish, English and Hebrew that explain, “Along this path of suffering a death over 300,000 Jews were driven in 1942-43 from the Warsaw Ghetto to the gas chambers of the Nazi extermination camps.”
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 inscription intersects 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 are inscribed the names of its artists, builders, and sponsors.
Inscriptions:
in Polish:
TA DROGA
CIERPIENIA I SMIERCI
WLATACH 1942-1943
Z UTWORZONEGO
WOWARSZAWIE GETTA
PRZESZŁO
DO HITLEROWSKICH
OBOZOW ZAGŁADY
PONAD
300 000 ŻYDOW
Translation: This path / of suffering and death / in the years 1942-1943 / from the ghetto established / in Warsaw / was traversed / to the Hitlerite extermination camps by over 300,000 Jews
in Hebrew:
מכאן הוגלו
בשנים 1943-1942
בתקופת
הכיבוש הגרמני
מעל ל-300000 יהודים
מגיטו וארשר
בדרך
של סבל וייסורים
למחנות–הםוות
הנאציים
Translation: From here, during the German occupation in 1942-1943, over 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto were deported along a path of suffering and torment to the Nazi death camps.
in English:
ALONG THIS PATH
OF SUFFERING
AND DEATH
OVER 300,000 JEWS
WERE DRIVEN IN 1942-43
FROM
THE WARSAW GHETTO
TO THE GAS CHAMBERS
OF THE NAZI
EXTERMINATION CAMPS
Inscription on side wall, Job 16:18 in Hebrew, Yiddish and Polish.
Hebrew:
ארץ אל תכסי דמי
ואל יהי מקום לזעקתי
איוב טז ח
Yiddish:
ערד זאלסט ניט אודעקן מיין בלוט
און זאל ניט קיין אדט זיין פאר מיין געשריי
איוב טז ח
Polish:
ZIEMIO NIE KRYI MOJEJ KRWI
IƵBY MOI KRZYK NIE USTAWAŁ
Translation: Earth, do not cover their blood, may my cry never be laid to rest! Job 16:18
Commissioned by
City of Warsaw
With financial support from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
sub-set tree: 
| Ul. Stawki close to the intersection of ul. Dzika Warsaw
Grey granite (reconstruction, 2008)
Swedish syenite
Wall = 4 meters high
The memorial was vandalized on January 7, 2025, with the inscription "Warsaw 1943 = Gaza 2025."
The monument is located 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 idea for the monument was developed after the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1983. This was the period of the rise of Poland’s Solidarity Movement, during which discussion about the Holocaust was more public, though followed by the crackdown on political dissidents and the imposition of Martial Law. One dissident group was the Civic Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Monuments, which, after 198,3 received official recognition. According to committee member Kontanty Gebert, “having gained official recognition, the committee decided to build a new Holocaust Memorial, breaking with the traditional emphasis on both the uprising and the de-individualized approach to the Jewish victims who were being commemorated. The project, called the Memorial Route of Jewish Martyrdom and Struggle, designed by architect Hanna Szmalenberg and sculptor Wladyslaw Klamerus, received official approval and was unveiled in 1988, on the 45th anniversary of the ghetto uprising.”
The Umschlagplatz monument was built as the final stop on the Memorial Route, and it was dedicated more than a year before the fall of the Polish Communist government in the elections of 1989. The development of the project took place under Communism, but simultaneously with major political changes in Poland.
After its dedication, the monument received critical praise for its design, and played a role in opening up public discussion about Polish-Jewish history, and the Holocaust in Poland. On June 11, 1999, during his seventh apostolic journey to Poland, John Paul II prayed for the Jewish nation at the monument. In 2002, the monument itself, a fragment of a loading yard, and two adjacent buildings (before the wa,r Stawki St. 4/6 and 8, now no. 10) were entered into the register of historical monuments.
In 2007–2008, the monument was completely renovated, somewhat changing its appearance. Due to deterioration, the Polish-sourced white Biała Marianna marble panels were replaced with a new grey granite skin (from Zimnik, Lower Silesia), which was more resistant to weather conditions, but somewhat lessened the aesthetic impact. The exterior wall was no longer white, and thus resembled less a Jewish tallit (prayer shawl).
Since 2012, the Memorial March of July 22, which is organized by the Jewish Historical Institute to commemorate the victims of the deportation from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942, has begun at the monument.
Drzewiecki, Henryk. “Trakt Pamięci w Warszawie.” Res Publica. (2/1990. p. 41–44.)
Gebert, Kontanty, “The Dialectics of Memory in Poland: Holocaust Memorials in Warsaw,” in James E. Young, The Art of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History (New York: Jewish Museum, 1994), 121-129.
Gruber, Samuel. “Poland: Monuments and Memory in Warsaw,” Samuel Gruber’s Jewish Art and Monuments, (June 16, 2009), https://samgrubersjewishartmonuments.blogspot.com/2009/06/poland-monuments-and-memory-in-warsaw.html (accessed April 23, 2025)
Valley, Eli. The Great Jewish Cities of Central and Eastern Europe. (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1999)
Wiesław Głębocki: Warszawskie pomniki. Wydawnictwo PTTK "Kraj", 1990, p. 108-109, ISBN 83-7005-211-8 (accessed April 23, 2025)