The Memorial to Polish Soldiers and German Anti-Fascists (German: Denkmal des polnischen Soldaten und deutschen Antifaschisten; Polish: Pomnik żołnierza polskiego i niemieckiego antyfaszysty) is a war memorial in Berlin, dedicated in 1972. Built by the German Democratic Republic during the division of Germany, it is today the principal German monument to the Polish soldiers who died in World War II, as well as an important monument to the German resistance.
The monument is located in Volkspark Friedrichshain, in the borough of Friedrichshain in former East Berlin. It was conceived at a time of improving relations between East Germany and Poland as a monument to the cooperation between the communist Polish People's Army and German communists in the struggle against National Socialism. The monument of gray Silesian granite was designed by the Polish sculptors Zofia Wolska and Tadeusz Łodzian and the Germans Arnd Wittig and Günther Merkel. Its centerpiece is a pair of parallel 15-meter stone columns (which are actually a single structure) united by a bronze flag. The monument area is in the foot of a hill, and is set off with a wall bearing the motto of Tadeusz Kościuszko, "For your freedom and ours," in Polish (Za waszą i naszą wolność) and German (Für eure und unsere Freiheit), and a relief showing figures of a Polish and Red Army soldier together with a German resistance fighter. Below the columns is the dedicatory plaque, in Polish, German, and Russian, where wreath-laying ceremonies take place.
The monument was rededicated in 1995 following German reunification to include non-communist Polish soldiers and victims of the Nazis, as well as all German resistance movements, and plaques in Polish and German were added explaining this. The monument was left otherwise unchanged, and the columns still bear the communist-era coat of arms of the People's Republic of Poland and the coat of arms of East Germany.
In recent years, concern mounted as to the amount of vandalism and graffiti inflicted on the monument. In 2004, a German company agreed to sponsor the maintenance of the monument. In 2005, the memorial was defaced with neo-Nazi slogans and in 2012 it was further desecrated as part of a Nike branding campaign. The monument is still frequently used as a place for skateboarding, causing further damage.
Famous quotes containing the words memorial, polish, soldiers and/or german:
“I hope there will be no effort to put up a shaft or any monument of that sort in memory of me or of the other women who have given themselves to our work. The best kind of a memorial would be a school where girls could be taught everything useful that would help them to earn an honorable livelihood; where they could learn to do anything they were capable of, just as boys can. I would like to have lived to see such a school as that in every great city of the United States.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“It is the art of mankind to polish the world, and every one who works is scrubbing in some part.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“On becoming soldiers we have not ceased to be citizens.”
—Oliver Cromwell’s Soldiers. Address, 1647, to the English Parliament. “Humble Representation.”
“Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.”
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)