Umschlagplatz

Warsaw


Here once stood the railway terminus from which Warsaw’s Jews were transported by the German military to Treblinka. The rectangular monument’s marble walls are carved with more than 3000 Jewish forenames, from Aba to Zygmunt, and the stark message: ‘Along this path of suffering and death over 300,000 Jews were driven in 1942–43 from the Warsaw Ghetto to the gas chambers of the German extermination camps’.

Its shape is symbolic of the cattle trucks into which the prisoners were herded.


Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby Warsaw attractions

1. Anielewicz’s Bunker

0.15 MILES

Also known as Miła 18, the memorial mound and obelisk mark what was once a hidden shelter during the time of the Warsaw Ghetto, used by ŻOB, a Jewish…

2. Willy Brandt Monument

0.21 MILES

On 7 December 1970 German chancellor Willy Brandt famously fell to his knees in front of the Ghetto Heroes Monument in a gesture of contrition for Germany…

4. Ghetto Heroes Monument

0.28 MILES

Look closely and you see there are actually two monuments here commemorating the thousands who lost their lives in the ill-fated Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of…

5. Pawiak Prison Museum

0.42 MILES

During WWII the prison that once stood here was used by the Gestapo – that's the time period that the displays in this grimly fascinating museum focus on…

6. St Charles Borromeo Church

0.49 MILES

This late-18th-century church was designed by Domenico Merlini and stands beside the main entrance to Powązki Cemetery.

7. Esperanto Mural

0.5 MILES

Dr Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof (1859–1917) spoke around a dozen languages before inventing the international language of Esperanto in 1887. He lived in…

8. Bohdan Lachert Mural

0.52 MILES

This 2012 mural by Anna Koźbiel and Adam Walas commemorates the modernist architect Bohdan Lachert (1900–87), who designed part of Muranów in the 1950s…