Radegast train station
The Radegast Station (Polish Radogoszcz ) is a former railway station in Łódź since 2005 and a memorial of the Ghetto Lodz.
History
The Radegast station was built in 1937 in the former town Radegast, which today is part of the Łódź district Bałuty, as the loading station. After the establishment of the Lodz ghetto, this station served as the main transport connection to the outside, as it was located just beyond the northern border of the ghetto. First, the station was used for the transport of food and raw materials that were needed in the factories of the ghetto, and to carry away the goods produced by Germany. This was primarily about things, shoes and uniforms for the German Wehrmacht.
As of 1941, the station was also used for the transport of people, including the daily transport to the labor camps in the region around Lodz. Jews from Western Europe ( Germany, Austria, Czech Republic and Luxembourg ) and the Łódź region ( Wartheland ) were abducted on Radegast ghetto, where they were first used as laborers. Alone within a year (1941 /42) 38,000 Jews from Central Europe and 5,000 Gypsies were taken to the Lodz ghetto. In the period from January 16 to August 29, 1944 Finally, more than 150,000 Jews from Radegast were transported to the concentration camp Chelmno and Auschwitz.
The station Lodz Radegast was closed in the 1970s.
Memorial Radegast Station
During the commemorative events in 2004 to mark the 60th anniversary of the closure of the ghetto and the last transport of Radegast was suggested that the station in a Holocaust Memorial ( Holocaust Memorial Radegast station ) remodel. With designs was started in 2003. With support from the Foundation Monumentum Iudaicum Lodzense and with the help of donations from Poland and abroad, the memorial was completed within two years. 2005, a museum in the former wooden station building was opened. By Jewish survivors, a memorial was unveiled on 28 August 2005, which by Czesław Bielecki in the form of a tower reminiscent of a crematorium with the inscription "Thou shalt not kill" was designed.
A 140 -meter-long "tunnel of the deportees " with the transport lists on the walls leading from the station premises there, paving the way is symbolized in the extermination camps. Six large grave stones with the names of the death camps remember the more than 150,000 Jews who were sent by Radegast of the death and of which only a few survived. A true to the original train of the Deutsche Reichsbahn with three carriages stands beside the station building. The museum contains books with the lists of those who were transported from Radegast by Chelmno and Auschwitz. After an analysis of the University of Łódź, the memorial is visited by 36,000 people a year.