Skwer Szmula Zygielbojma, Warsaw

Here at Lewartowskiego Street beside Zamenhofa, the Szmul Zygielbojm Monument commemorates a Bund politician and activist. Marek Moderau designed it, and it was unveiled on the twenty-second of June nineteen ninety-seven. The work makes grief physical: cracked pale granite lies in the paving, while a syenite panel set into the façade carries silhouettes and flames.

Zygielbojm represented the Bund on Poland’s National Council in London. In May nineteen forty-three, he took his own life in protest at the Allied powers’ inaction during the destruction of Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto. The inscription draws on his suicide letter and appears in Polish and Yiddish. It also forms part of Warsaw’s Memorial Route of Jewish Martyrdom and Struggle.