Work on the monument at the Ghetto Victims Square began with the extraction of an urn beneath it with soil collected from battlefields and places of execution and martyrdom of civilians. The urn was moved to the mass grave of terror victims at the Pobitno cemetery. On Wednesday, the contractor began dismantling the monument's sculptural elements.
The first to be taken down was the figure of a woman with a child crowning the 8.5-meter obelisk. The operation lasted several hours. Workers first secured the sculpture with straps, and then used pneumatic hammers to separate it from the plinth. The figure weighs 6.6 tons.
Rzeszów: The sculpture will go to the museum
The sculpture from the top of the monument will go to the Technology and Military Museum in Rzeszów. The mayor of Rzeszów, Konrad Fijołek, announced the removal of the monument from the Ghetto Victims Square in 2022, after Russia launches a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The city mayor's spokeswoman, Marzena Kłeczek-Krawiec, explained that the matter was extended by the dismantling formula adopted by the city.
Everything took so long because the president announced the dismantling of the monument, not its demolition. We wanted not to destroy individual elements, but to preserve those that have artistic value, said the president's spokeswoman.
She added that the bas-reliefs and commemorative plaques will be moved to the cemetery of Soviet Army soldiers at ul. Lviv. The bas-reliefs depict, among others: Marshal Ivan Konev and General Karol Świerczewski, a battle scene, the oath on the banner and the worker and peasant.
What will stand in place of the monument?
The city does not intend to erect a new monument in place of the demolished monument. We must remember that this square is a former Jewish cemetery, so we will not place any additional monuments there. Paving stones will be laid in the place where the monument stood, said Marzena Kłeczek-Krawiec.
While the city wanted to preserve some of the elements, the Institute of National Remembrance demanded the liquidation of the entire facility. The director of the Rzeszów branch of the Institute of National Remembrance, Dariusz Iwaneczko, said that the monument was not a neutral testimony of history, but an object glorifying the Red Army.
An object that clearly glorified the Red Army remained in public space. Many inhabitants of Podkarpacie and Poland experienced enormous cruelty on the part of the Red Army, the Soviet army and the services of the Soviet state in 1944-1945, he emphasized.
According to Ivanenko, the monument perpetuated the propaganda vision of the Red Army as a liberator, disregarding the repression that soldiers of the Polish independence underground and the civilian population experienced after the entry of Soviet troops.
We demanded that this monument disappear from public space because it insulted the memory of Poland's true heroes, while glorifying those who committed terrible crimes against the Polish nation, said the director of the Rzeszów Institute of National Remembrance.
The city will pay nearly PLN 156,000 for dismantling the monument. PLN, the works are to be completed no later than November 30.
The monument was unveiled on November 6, 1951, during the celebration of the anniversary of the October Revolution. In 2016, a law came into force prohibiting the propagation of communism or any other totalitarian system, among others. through monuments. Two years later, Rzeszów councilors decided to remove the object from the Ghetto Victims Square and move it to the cemetery of Soviet soldiers, but the resolution was not implemented.
