Monte Cassino, Warsaw

Before you rises Warsaw’s Monument to the Battle of Monte Cassino, placed on the small square between General Anders Street and the Krasiński Gardens gate. At its heart, a wounded, headless Nike breaks out from a shattered column cinched by a broad band. The whole work is reinforced concrete clad in white Carrara marble, and it weighs two hundred and twenty tonnes.

Notice the draped hill and scattered helmets set into the monument’s base; they evoke the battlefield rather than offering a triumphal image. Beneath the drapery rests an urn containing the ashes of heroes. The pedestal also bears the Monte Cassino Cross and the emblems of five Polish formations involved in the battle.

This memorial honours the Polish Second Corps, which captured Monte Cassino on the eighteenth of May nineteen forty-four. Veterans of that corps contributed funds for its creation. Irena Anders, widow of the corps commander Władysław Anders, unveiled it on the thirtieth of May nineteen ninety-nine. A companion memorial expresses gratitude to Persia, now Iran, for receiving more than one hundred and twenty thousand Polish refugees who fled the Soviet Union with Anders’s Army.