• Umschlagplatz Memorial
Between autumn 1940 and the summer of 1943, Poland's capital Warsaw was the site of the largest ghetto in National Socialist occupied Europe. Since 1988, a memorial has commemorated the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were deported from the »Umschlagplatz« to the Treblinka death camp and murdered there.
Image: Warsaw, 1940, A quarter mainly inhabited by Jews had been deemed »endangered by epidemics« in November 1939, Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln
Warsaw, 1940, A quarter mainly inhabited by Jews had been deemed »endangered by epidemics« in November 1939, Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln

Image: Warsaw, 2010, Umschlagplatz Memorial, Stiftung Denkmal, Philipp Jähnig
Warsaw, 2010, Umschlagplatz Memorial, Stiftung Denkmal, Philipp Jähnig
Before the Second World War, there were about 350,000 Jews living in Warsaw. Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the German Wehrmacht occupied the city at the end of September. In October 1940, the German occupation forces established the Warsaw Ghetto. All of the Jews living in Warsaw and surrounding areas, about 410,000 people, had to move to the small, crowded and enclosed area. The Germans appointed a »Judenrat«, headed by engineer Adam Czerniaków, to implement German orders and administer ghetto matters.
In 1942, the systematic murder of Jews in the General Government, which Warsaw was a part of, began. On July 22, 1942, Czerniaków was ordered to compile lists of thousands of people to be deported on a daily basis. While the ghetto inmates were for the most part unaware of what the announced »resettlement to the east« entailed, Czerniaków knew that the deportees were to be murdered. On July 23, he committed suicide.
Until mid-September 1942, the SS deported up to 7,000 Jews a day to the Treblinka extermination camp. Members of the German Ordnungspolizei and the Jewish ghetto police helped organise the deportations. The overcrowded freight cars departed from the »Umschlagplatz«, a separate part of the freight depot on the northern edge of the ghetto.
Image: Warsaw, 1940, A quarter mainly inhabited by Jews had been deemed »endangered by epidemics« in November 1939, Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln
Warsaw, 1940, A quarter mainly inhabited by Jews had been deemed »endangered by epidemics« in November 1939, Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln

Image: Warsaw, 2010, Umschlagplatz Memorial, Stiftung Denkmal, Philipp Jähnig
Warsaw, 2010, Umschlagplatz Memorial, Stiftung Denkmal, Philipp Jähnig
Apart from Warsaw Jews, the German authorities also forced about 50,000 Jews from the areas surrounding Warsaw, thousands of Jews from Bohemia, from the German Reich and several groups of Sinti and Roma from Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary to resettle to the Warsaw Ghetto.
According to statistics of the Judenrat, 254,000 Jews were forced to board freight cars on the »Umschlagplatz« in the course of the »Great Action«, the systematic deportations to the Treblinka death camp during the summer of 1942. After the mass deportations, mostly young Jews capable of working remained in the ghetto. Following the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in May 1943, the SS deported almost all of the remaining survivors: about 7,000 were taken to Treblinka, and over 40,000 to various labour camps in the Lublin district.
Of the approximately 500,000 Jews who had lived in the Warsaw Ghetto, only a few thousand survived to see the end of the war.
Image: Warsaw, 1942, Deportation from the Umschlagplatz, Żydowski Instytut Historyczny
Warsaw, 1942, Deportation from the Umschlagplatz, Żydowski Instytut Historyczny

Image: Warsaw, 2010, Plaque with dedication on the wall of the Memorial, Stiftung Denkmal, Philipp Jähnig
Warsaw, 2010, Plaque with dedication on the wall of the Memorial, Stiftung Denkmal, Philipp Jähnig
In 1988, on the 45th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the »Umschlagplatz Memorial« was inaugurated. It was designed by architect Hanna Szmalenberg and sculptor Władysław Klamerus. The memorial is located on the former site of the Umschlagplatz, which is today undistinguishable in the city landscape: the freight depot, from which the transports headed for Treblinka departed, no longer exists. The memorial consists of a wall surrounding a small space. Hundreds of first names engraved on the wall commemorate the victims. Hebrew and Yiddish quotes as well as inscriptions in several other languages on the history of the site complete the monument.
The memorial is part of the »Memorial Trail of Jewish Martyrdom and Resistance«, which the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, the other central memorial on the former ghetto area, is also part of. 19 memorial stones commemorate individuals who were in the Warsaw Ghetto. One of them is dedicated to pedagogue Janusz Korczak, who would not leave the 192 orphans in his care and stayed at their side when they were sent to the gas chambers of Treblinka.
Image: Warsaw, 2010, Detailed view of the Memorial, Philipp Jähnig
Warsaw, 2010, Detailed view of the Memorial, Philipp Jähnig

Image: Warsaw, 2006, Back of the Memorial, Georg Mayer
Warsaw, 2006, Back of the Memorial, Georg Mayer
Name
Pomnik Umschlagplatz
Address
ul. Stawki 10
00-193 Warszawa
Open
The memorial is accessible at all times.