www.monumentaustralia.org.au

Mlawa Ghetto Print Page Print this page

Inscription:23-September-2016
Inscription:23-September-2016

Photographs supplied by Sandra Brown

The monument commemorates the victims of the Holocaust who were contained at Mlawa Ghetto between 1939 and 1942 in Poland and the Holocaust between 1939 1945. The monument is a tree sculptured in the shape of a menorah.

At the beginning of December 1940, rumors spread saying that the Jews will be expelled from the town of Mlawa. The Judenrat tried the cancel the edict. In prevention from being thrown into exile, the Jews of Mlawa, with the help of the Judenrat, paid 55,000 Marks to the Germans during the month of December 1940. In spite of this, on December 6, 1940, at dawn, hundreds of German policemen arrived to Mlawa. The policemen raided every Jewish house and ordered the residents to evacuate it within five minutes. In great panic, accompanied by beatings, yelling and dog barks, the soldiers herded all the Jews of Mlawa to the yard of one of the gymnasiums in town.

From those at the yard, 3,000 were selected and the rest were freed back to their homes. After the transport of Jews on December 6th, 1940, Mlawa was officially left with 2,450 Jews. A ghetto was later formed for these remaining 2,450 Jews and for several months the ghetto remained opened, but by May 1941, the ghetto was completely sealed up. Mlawa's ghetto had also made room to accommodate about 1000 Jews from Szrensk, Radazanów, and Zielun. By that time, due to the secret reappearance of some Mlawer deportees, the population of the ghetto rose up to around 5,000 Jews. By the end of 1942, the majority of Mlawa's Jews and its environs were exterminated in Auschwitz.

The Holocaust was a genocide in which Adolf Hitler'`s Nazi Germany and its collaborators killed about six million Jews. The victims included 1.5 million children and represented about two-thirds of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe. Some definitions of the Holocaust include the additional five million non-Jewish victims of Nazi mass murders bringing the total to about 11 million.

Location

Address:50 Browns Road, Melbourne Chevra Kadisha Springvale Cemetery, Noble Park North, 3174
State:VIC
Area:Foreign
GPS Coordinates:Lat: -37.945607
Long: 145.187837
Note: GPS Coordinates are approximate.
View Google Map

Details

Monument Type:Sculpture
Monument Theme:Conflict
Sub-Theme:Genocide
Artist:Simon Kessel

Dedication

Approx. Monument Dedication Date:2002
Front Inscription

Mlawa Landsmanschaft

Melbourne

The families of those who perished in the Mlawa Ghetto (1939 - 42) and the Holocaust (1939 - 45)

Remember

[ Names ]

This tree fashioned in the form of the Menorah has six roots representing six million dead and eighteen leaves embodying the regeneration and renewal of Jewish life and spirit.

Sculptor - Simon Kessel 2002

Source: MA
Monument details supplied by Monument Australia - www.monumentaustralia.org.au