Lublin. Memory of the Holocaust Trail
The area of Lublin and the Lublin region was a territory destined by the German occupying forces for the realisation of Operation Reinhard. The headquarters of the chief commander and supervisor of the action, Odilo Globocnik, were situated in the city itself. Operation Reinhard commenced in Lublin at night, between the 16th and 17th of March 1942 with the liquidation of the ghetto in Podzamcze. The Jews of Lublin were the first victims of the action having been deported to the death camp in Bełżec. The camp served an experimental function, allowing for the perpetraitors to elaborate an extermination system later employed in other Operation Reinhard camps. Out of the 43,000 Lublin Jews, nearly 28,000 were murdered in the Bełżec death camp having been sent there from the railway platform in Zimna Street. The details of the deportation are as yet unknown.The idea for the Lublin. Memory of the Holocaust commemoration has its origins in the recognised need to mark the sites connected to the Holocaust of the Lublin Jews in the public space of the city. The urban space designated for the trail no longer recalls or relates to the historical significance of the sites in question. After WWII the Jewish district in Podzamcze was demolished – streets, synagogues and houses with adjoining buildings were razed to the ground. The space left by the Podzamcze ghetto was re-edified and its original sections are not marked as such. A new housing estate was constructed within the boundaries of the former Majdan Tatarski ghetto and this, too, fails to offer information on the history of the area. The site where the Jewish orphanage children and their guardians were executed is now covered with green spaces which are also part of a housing development. The only physical trace of the Jewish district in Wieniawa is one surviving building. The Memory Trail marks the following sites in the city space:Umschlagplatz – Mis/Remembrance of the Place – art installation (Tatary district);The route from the Maharshal Synagogue site to the Lublin Umschlagplatz in Zimna Street (Stare Miasto, Kalinowszczyzna, Tatary districts);The boundaries of the Podzamcze ghetto (Śródmieście, Stare Miasto districts);The area of the destroyed Jewish Quarter in Podzamcze (Stare Miasto district);The boundaries of the residual ghetto in Majdan Tatarski (Bronowice district);The site where the orphanage children and their guardians were executed (Tatary district);The area of the destroyed Jewish Quarter in Wieniawa (Wieniawa district).The commemoration is being created on the initiative of the “Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre” Centre.The application presents also other places connected to the Holocaust memory in Lublin, as the State Museum at Majdanek established at the site of the former German concentration camp which functioned on the outskirts of Lublin between October 1941 and July 1944. It was opened in November 1944 and was the first museum devoted to the commemoration of the victims of World War II in Europe.
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