180 CENTRAL EASTERN EUROPE

For hotels and restaurants in this region see pp218–21 and pp222–5

Pac Palace 9

Pałac Paca

ul. Miodowa 15. Map D2. Tel (022)
634 9600. @ 100, 116, 175, 180,

195. 
     

     occasionally.

     
     

This Baroque palace, formerly
the residence of the Radziwiłł
family, was designed and built
between 1681 and 1697 by
Dutch-born architect Tylman
van Gameren. One of the
palace’s 19th-century owners,
Ludwik Pac, commissioned
the architect Henryk Marconi
to redesign it; work was com-
pleted in 1828. The interiors
were decorated in the Gothic,
Renaissance, Greek and
Moorish styles, and the façade
remodelled in the Palladian
manner. The palace gate was
modelled on a triumphal arch
and adorned with Classical
bas-relief sculptures – the

Monument to the

Heroes of the

Ghetto 0

Pomnik Bohaterów Getta

ul. Zamenhofa. Map C1. @ 107,

111, 180.

The city of Warsaw still lay in

ruins when the Monument to

the Heroes of the Ghetto was

erected in 1948. Created by the

sculptor Natan Rapaport and

the architect Marek Suzin, it

symbolizes the heroic defi ance

of the Ghetto Uprising of 1943,

which was planned not as a

bid for liberty but as an hon-

our able way to die. The daring

revolt lasted for one month.

Reliefs on the monument

depict men, women and child -

ren struggling to flee the burn-

ing ghetto, together with a

pro cession of Jews being dri-

ven to death camps under the

threat of Nazi bayonets.

On 7 December 1970, Willy

Brandt, the then chancellor of

West Germany, knelt in front

of this monument, to pay

hom age to the murdered vic-

tims. Today, people come

here from all over the world

to remember the heroes. A

new museum, Museum of

the History of Polish Jews

(Muzeum Historii Żydów

Polskich) is being built close

to the monument, within the

former ghetto area of the city.

Detail from the Monument to the
Heroes of the Ghetto

Umschlagplatz

Monument q

Pomnik na Umschlagplatz

ul. Stawki. Map C1. @ 100,

157, 303, 307. v 16, 17, 19, 33,

35, 36, 41.

Unveiled in 1988, the

Umschlagplatz Monument

marks the site of a former

railway siding on ulica Dzika.

It was from here that some

300,000 Jews from the Warsaw

Ghetto and elsewhere were

loaded onto cattle trucks and

dispatched to extermination

camps. Among them was

Janusz Korczak, Polish-Jewish

author and pediatrician, and

his group of Jewish orphans.

Living conditions in the ghetto

were indescribably inhumane,

and by 1942 over 100,000 of

the inhabitants had died. The

monument, on which the

archi tect Hanna Szmalenberg

and the sculptor Władysław

Klamerus collaborated, is made

of blocks of black-and-white

marble bearing the names of

hundreds of Warsaw’s Jews.

One of the granite blocks marking

the Path of Remembrance

Nineteenth-century Gothic interior of the Pac Palace

work of Ludwik Kaufman,

a pupil of the celebrated

Italian Neo-Classical sculptor

Antonio Canova. Today, the

palace houses the Ministry

of Health.

Between the Monument to

the Heroes of the Ghetto and

the Umschlagplatz Monument

runs the Path of Remembrance,

opened in 1988. It is marked

by a series of 16 granite blocks

bearing inscriptions in Polish,

Hebrew and Yiddish. The

nearby Bunker Monument, on

the site where the Uprising

com manders blew themselves

up, has been specially marked.

Each block is dedi cated to the

450,000 Jews murdered in the

Warsaw Ghetto between 1940

and 1943, to the heroes of the

Ghetto Uprising of 1943 and

to cer tain key individuals

from that time.