The Memorial Route of Jewish Martyrdom and Struggle

It consists of nineteen stone blocks along a route from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Monument to the Umschlagplatz. The memorial was designed by architect Hanna Szmalenberg and sculptor Wladyslaw Klamerus.

This is one of those blocks

Photo 154, May 2007

The Memorial Route of Jewish Martyrdom and Struggle

One of the blocks, this one dedicated to the memory of Janus Korczak, a pediatrician, who chose to accompany the children of his orphanage to their deaths in Treblinka instead of saving himself — he had had offers of excape from the ghetto.

Photo 155, May 2007

The Memorial Route of Jewish Martyrdom and Struggle

One of the blocks, this one dedicated to poet Yitzhak Katzenelson (or Kacenelson).

Born near Minsk, he ran an underground school in Warsaw for Jewish children. His wife and two of his sons were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp and killed there.

Katzenelson participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising starting on April 18, 1943. To save his life, friends supplied him with forged Honduran passports. He managed to leave the ghetto but later surrendered to the Gestapo. He was deported to a detention camp in Vittel, France, where the Nazis held American and British citizens and other nationals of Allied and neutral countries, for possible later prisoner exchange.

In Vittel, Katzenelson wrote "Dos lid funem oysgehargetn yidishn folk" (Yiddish: "Song of the Murdered Jewish People"). He put the manuscript in bottles and buried them under a tree, from where it was recovered after the war. A copy was sewed into the handle of a suitcase and later taken to Israel.

In late April 1944, Yitzhak Katzenelson and his son Zvi were sent on a transport to the Auschwitz extermination camp, where they were killed on May 1, 1944.

Photo 156, May 2007