Warsaw, Poland – Two remaining fragments of the wall that isolated the Warsaw Ghetto should be put on a list of historical monuments, a regional conservation official in Poland said Tuesday.
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The proposal published on Tuesday says the red brick wall at 53 Sienna Street should be protected as a witness to history and preserved for future generations.
It says monument status would give legal protection to a “unique historical memento, priceless to the Jewish and the Polish nation.” The decision is subject to appeal.
The wall was built in 1940, when Nazis closed the area of Warsaw they called the “Jewish district.” It was four meters (13 feet) high, including one meter of barbed wire on top. About 450,000 residents died of hunger and disease there or in the gas chambers of the Treblinka death camp.
The Germans destroyed the ghetto and most of the wall in 1943. Hundreds of residents resisted, but the Ghetto Uprising was crushed in May 1943 and almost all its fighters were killed.
Only the German parts, not the Polish parts.