Stutthof Museum

COMMEMORATION

The Monument against war and fascism is the main accent of commemoration in the former concentration camp. It is a work of the sculptor Wiktor Tolkin. The monument consists of two big blocks; the horizontal one is a wall that is 48 meters long and 3.5 meters high. Its artistic form expresses the martyrdom of the camp`s prisoners. On the back of the wall there is a reliquary of not completely burnt human remains from the holocaustal stake - a place where in the years of 1944 and 1945 the Nazis burnt the bodies of their victims. The vertical element is a block eleven meters high, slightly moved forward, which symbolises fight and victory

The monument was unveiled on May 12th 1968 during a great manifestation of people held at the 23rd anniversary of freeing the camp

The place in front of the monument has been commemorated as the "Forum of Nations" - a place where members of pacific manifestations meet and the faithful assembling for religious services are held on every first Sunday of September.

Symbolic horizontal walls marking the numbers of blocks have been erected in places where prisoners` barracks of the new camp stood. Stone surfaces reconstructing the shape of the architecture of the camp mark the place of those barracks of the old camp which have not survived to the present day.

The general commemorating accent of the camp is completed by the Stutthof entrance situated at the road as well as by stone blocks and a commemorating table at the place of the holocaustal stake, 500 meters away from the museum gate. To commemorate the victims - the faithful of the two mostly represented religions in the camp, the Christian and the Jewish, two symbols of these religions have been erected near the crematory and the gas chamber; in the south a cross, in the north the star of David.