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In the Holocaust, the Umschlagplatz (Template:Lang-de) in the Warsaw Ghetto was where Jews gathered for deportation to the Treblinka extermination camp during Operation Reinhard at the time of German occupation of Poland. It is currently located on Stawki Street, and the monument was erected in 1988 to commemorate the deportation victims.

During the Grossaktion Warsaw, beginning on July 22, 1942, Jews were deported in crowded freight cars to Treblinka. On some days as many as 10,000 Jews were deported. An estimated 300,000 Jews were taken to the Treblinka gas chambers, and some sources describe it as the largest killing of any single community in World War II. The deportations ended on September 21, 1942.

The Umschlagplatz was created by fencing off a western part of the Warszawa Gdańska freight train station that was adjacent to the ghetto. The area was surrounded by a wooden fence, replaced later by a wall. Railway buildings and installations on the site as well as a former homeless shelter and a hospital were converted to the prisoner selection facility. The rest of the train station served its normal function for the rest of the city during the deportations.

Monument

On 18 April 1988, on the eve of the 45th anniversary of the outbreak of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a stone monument resembling an open freight car was unveiled to mark the Umschlagplatz. The inscription on four commemorative plaques in Polish, Yiddish, English and Hebrew reads:

Along this path of suffering and death over 300 000 Jews were driven in 1942-1943 from the Warsaw Ghetto to the gas chambers of the Nazi extermination camps.

400 most popular Jewish-Polish first names, in alphabetical order from Aba to Żanna, were engraved on the monument, each one commemorating 1,000 victims of the Warsaw Ghetto. The gate is surmounted by a syenite grave stone (donated by the government and society of Sweden) with a motif of shattered forest - a symbol of the exterminantion of the Jewish nation.

The selection and sequence of colours of the monument (white with the black strip on the front wall) refer to the Jewish ritual clothing. The monument was created by architect Hanna Szmalenberg and sculptor Władysław Klamerus. It replaced a commemorative plaque unveiled in late 1940s. In 2002 the monument site and the adjacent school buildings were listed in the Register of Historic Monuments.

• Jews waiting to be deported at the Umschlagplatz
• Umschlagplatz Monument
• Walls of the monument symbolically create an open freight car

• Commemorative plaques and Jewish first names engraved on the monument
• The ghetto tram front of Umschlagplatz

See also

• Oyneg Shabbos chroniclers of the Warsaw Ghetto led by Emanuel Ringelblum
• Warsaw Ghetto boundary markers

References

1. Wiesław Głębocki, Warszawskie pomniki, Wydawnictwo PTTK "Kraj", Warszawa 1990, p. 108
2. Rejestr zabytów nieruchomych - Warszawa Narodowy Instytut Dziedzictwa, p. 47, Retrieved 11 August 2012

Bibliography

• Bernard Goldstein. Five Years in the Warsaw Ghetto. Dolphin, Doubleday. New York, 1961
• Emanuel Ringelblum. Kronika getta warszawskiego wrzesień 1939 - styczeń 1943. Warszawa 1988.

52°15′08″N 20°59′21″E / 52.2523083333°N 20.9890777778°E / 52.2523083333; 20.9890777778

• History of Warsaw
• Jewish Polish history
• The Holocaust in Poland
• Holocaust terminology
• Squares in Warsaw
• Warsaw Ghetto