Obj. ID: 33307
Memorials  Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw, Poland, 1948

On the right side of the relief's base: NATAN RAPOPPO[RT]

James Young presents the history of monument in detail in the book, The Texture of Memory (1993), summarized here:

The first call for a monument to the April 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising came a year later by the poet Julian Tuvim in his manifesto “We, Polish Jews …” Sculptor Nathan Rapoport probably read the Russian version of the poem published in 1944 by the Union of Polish Patriots. And vowed to create a monument to the Uprising, but his efforts were suppressed by Soviet authorities. The Polish-born Jewish artist had escaped to the Soviet Union and was working for the Red Army at the time, as a sculptor of Soviet heroes. Before he knew the details of the uprising, he conceived a heroic monument that drew on elements of his classical training, Jewish tradition, and the Social Realist style preferred by Stalin and the Soviet regime. Rapoport's earliest designs were criticized as being too Stalinist, and by Soviet arbiters of taste as being too “nationalistic,” by which was meant “too Jewish.” 

Rapoport continued to work on models for the monument until 1946 when he was repatriated to Warsaw and design which he had brought with him was almost immediately approved by the Warsaw Jewish Committee. Rapoport insisted that the proper location for the monument would be where the uprising had begun. Amidst the ruins, the committee had already marked the site of the Anielewicz bunker with a large red sandstone disc in a flower bed with an inscription dedicated to the Jewish fighting organization. They agreed to build the new monument nearby. The committee and artist spent a year raising funds before taking the project to the Warsaw Arts Committee, which delayed a decision, because of political uncertainly, and because at the time it was still uncertain to what extent Warsaw would be rebuilt at all, and if so, whether building materials could be spared for a monument. Finally, the committee accepted the proposal on the condition that the monument be unveiled on the 5th anniversary of the uprising on April 19, 1948, less than a year away. Significantly, the new State of Israel declared its independence a month later, on May 14, 1948

Rapoport moved to Paris to work on the monument and deliberately isolated himself from contemporary art trends. He used Jews from Palestine living in Paris as his models, to create, in his own words, “a clearly National Monument for the Jews, not a Polish monument. I wanted to show the Polish people who we really were."  At the same time, Mark Leon Suzin, a survivor and an architect, was commissioned to design and construct the base of the monument in Warsaw. He intended to clear the mountain of rubble from the monument and to anchor the monument solidly in the ground, but without mechanical equipment this was impossible, Instead, Suzin poured tons of concrete and reinforcement over the ruins to create a stable base. Subsequent settling of the rubble, however, would cause cracks in the monument’s granite base requiring reconstruction by municipal authorities in 1959.”

“At the end of 1947, while the foundry was casting the bronze part of the sculpture in Paris, Rapoport and Suzin traveled to Sweden in search of granite for the monument's retaining wall. The Jewish Agency in Stockholm directed them to the best quarry in the area, where they discovered a huge cache of perfectly cut labradorite granite blocks, ready to be shipped they were informed that these had been ordered during the war by Arno Brecker the great German sculptor for a monument in Berlin to commemorate Hitler's victory. Satisfied that the granite was in every way perfect for their own monument, sculptor and architect sent directly to Warsaw.” (Young, 1993, p. 168)

In March 1948 the bronze sculptures were unveiled in Paris to near unanimous acclaim. Rapoport was afraid the 90 pieces of statuary might be stopped by Soviet soldiers at the border so they were shipped by waterway to Warsaw and arrived in the last week of March 1948 along with the cut stone from Sweden. Polish sculptors, working from Rapoport's model, had only a few weeks to carve the bas-relief into the backside of the monument. When Rapoport arrived in Warsaw they had not finished, so he went to work helping the five sculptors.

At the unveiling Rabbi Driestmann of Poland recited the Mourner’s Kaddish and he was joined by most of the 12,000 survivors visiting Jewish dignitaries and local politicians and spectators quote according to witnesses and reporters, hundreds of flaming red banners of socialist and communist youth groups flutter together overhead with blue and White Star of David banners listed by Jewish and Zionist groups." After the prayers the monument was unveiled when Yitzhak Zuckerman a surviving leader of the uprising began to speak.

The monument is a two-sided and, in James Young’s view  “represents two Jewish types, each to be viewed separately. But in addition to the narrative movement on each side of the wall (the martyrs marching laterally right to left, the heroes ascending vertically), I detect a movement between opposing sides within the core of the wall itself, from dark side to light. For as we see from a side view of the monument, the engraved martyrs recede into the granite and become invisible, as if absorbed into the stone. On the western side facing the open square, however, the heroes’ profiles stand out in distinct relief period in this movement between sides, the ancient type seems to pass into the shaded wall only to emerge triumphantly out of the other side into the western light: one type is literally recessive, the other emergent.” (Texture of Memory, 1993, p. 174)