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The naked
body at the bottom of
the broken heart.
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 The Broken Heart Memorial in Łódź was the first site we visited in Poland. Maybe some of us (participants) were having jet lag. I could see some of us were exhausted from the six-hour flight, could be made worse by the three-hour bus ride from the airport in Warsaw. However, our enthusiasm was still there. I was curious. I was curious to see and feel what I have read in class so far. And I couldn't believe I was finally in Poland!!
We stood and looked at the Memorial. In my
mind, I asked, “This must be a very special place to be our first site. Why is it special? What is this? What does it symbolize?”
The architecture of this memorial is that of a naked body, supposedly of a child, with his back facing the public and his face hidden in the bigger structure of a broken heart. Built May 9, 1971 this memorial, known as "Pomnik Martyrologii Dzieci" (Memorial for the
Martyrdom of the Children), was to commemorate the Polish children who were detained, used as forced laborer, forced to be turned into Germans, and of course, killed during the Nazi regime. There were two children’s camps on this present park behind the memorial from 1942 to 1945. In 1947, the remains of the camps were
cleared by the communist government to build a city that reflected a more socialist society in hope to forget the horrendous past
that children have
suffered. But how can any one forget?
Sources:
Learning from History.
The Children's Concentration
Camp at Litzmannstadt
More about
Heinrich Himmler.
Scrapbookpages.com.
Famous speeches by Heinrich
Himmler. |
