PONIATOWA

Memorial in tribute to the thousands victims murdered by the Nazi invaders in the labor camp in Poniatowa 1941-1944

On October 25, 1958, at 1 p.m. an urn with ashes gathered in the places of mass executions of prisoners held in the labour camp in Poniatowa was ceremonially carried to the square in the Old Housing Estate to be used as a memorial to the bestial murderers and as a tribute to the innocent victims of fascism. We should talk about the victims not of a camp, but camps because after the German army left the site in the summer of 1941, Stalag No. 359 was established there in the fall of the same year as a camp for Soviet Prisoners of War. Then, after the almost complete extermination of the Soviet soldiers imprisoned there, the place became a labour camp for Jews. According to an agreement signed by the head of the SS and police in Lublin, Odilo Globocnik, with Walther Caspar Többens, regarding cooperation and the transfer of Többens' textile factories from the Warsaw ghetto to Poniatowa, the camp officially functioned from January 31, 1942 (the first transport of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto arrived on February 23, 1942 ) until November 4, 1943, under the name of Werke Ponjatowa GmbH; SS-Arbeitslager Ponjatowa. According to the latest estimates, more than 30,000 people lost their lives between 1941 and 1944. The political correctness of the early Polish People's Republic (PRL) did not allow mention of the victims of the third camp, which existed in Poniatowa from July 1944, after being liberated by the troops coming from the east. First, the Red Army was stationed here, then it was a place of detention for the Home Army soldiers and civilians arrested by the Soviet terror apparatus - NKVD - operating in the Polish People's republic. Many inmates lost their lives or were sent to camps deep in the USSR.

The members of the Organizing Committee of the Ceremonies for the Transfer of Victims' Ashes and the Building a Monument to the Victims of Hitlerism at the ZBoWiD (The Society of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy) in ZWSI Poniatowa (Installation Equipment Manufacturing), in a proclamation dated October 18, 1958, they called all the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, hamlets, and towns to take part in the event in as large a number as possible, informing them at the same time that the monument would be built from voluntary community contributions and that there would not be a single citizen who would not contribute to its construction. First, probably still in 1958, they installed a plate with an inscription on a stone plinth in the place where the urn with ashes was deposited. Next, the place was crowned by an irregular arch of a raw, concrete monument. That monument to this day reminds us of the tragedy of many thousands of people and the martyrdom of many nations.

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