The Memory Trail

Zamkowy Square transformed in 1954 as 'People's Square' 

Reunion participants were invited to follow the Memory Trail, the path leading Jews to a railway platform for deportation to Belzec death camp in 1942. We met at Zamkowy Square, a large parking lot at the base of Royal Castle hill, once the heart of the Jewish district in Lublin.

For centuries, shops and houses lined Szeroka Street, the main road crossing Zamkowy Square. At 28 Szeroka Street, stood the house of Yaakov Yitzhak Ha-Levi Horowitz, the "Seer of Lublin," the famous spiritual leader and the co-founder of Chasidism in Poland. Maharshal synagogue, the largest of Lublin's eleven synagogues stood on Jateczna Street.

Mural depicting Jewish life in Lublin

On the trail, we saw a mural alongside the Czechówka River. The 100 meter mural is a collage of photographs from the 1930s showing people strolling along the street and shops with Polish and Yiddish signs on the walls.

Szeroka Street

In March 1941, Nazis created a ghetto in the Jewish district to gather Jews into one part of town. Operation Reinhard, the planned extermination of Jews, began with the liquidation of the ghetto. From March 17 to April 14, 1942, 28,000 Lublin Jews were deported to Belzec. After the liquidation of the ghetto, the buildings were demolished. Few remnants of the Jewish district exist today. A small monument with a map of the former Jewish district sits near the steps of the Royal Castle.

Wiesława Majczak with Tomasz Pietrasiewicz of GG Theatre

We stopped along the trail to hear the account of Wiesława Majczak, a Polish woman who witnessed the march from her apartment window as a child.

“I saw the route of the Jewish people, walking to the platform at the slaughterhouse. The crowd kind of streamed by. It wasn't that they just walked past – they walked, walked and walked. There was this clatter – that's how I remember the sound. The clatter of shoes on the cobblestone. And talking, and then also the shooting.

Umschlagplatz Memorial Site

“I watched it all from the second floor, so it seemed to me I could see heads and bundles only. It was as if the cobbled stones went by, the heads round and the bundles round. It was as if the street walked by, the cobblestone itself.”
Wiesława Majczak – the Account of a Historical Witness

Along the 4.5 km Memory Trail are 21 concrete slabs inscribed with a description of the death march including the quote from Wiesława Majczak's oral history. The route culminates at the railway platform and the Umschlagplatz Memorial Site.


The Memory Trail and Umschlagplatz Memorial are projects initiated by Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre Centre, with support from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Lublin City Council.