41 Płocka street - Wola

         This mural was painted on a blank wall of a three-storey-pre-war tenement house in 41 Płocka street, at the crossing of Górczewska street. In the year 2017 the Wola District Council and the Wola Culture Center announced the contest for a project and performing a mural painting on the subject "Remembrance of the Civilians of the Insurgent Warsaw". Its winner was a young painter and artistic photographic Damian Kwiatkowski.
         Workings on the mural lasted for 6 days. A team of three artists made the mural that is 180 square meters in area. The work shows life in Warsaw during the WWII. Scnes of everyday life of residents of the Uprising Warsaw were inserted into the painted figure of an insurgent. These scenes had been previously designed on the basis of genuine photographs from the period of the Warsaw Uprising. The colourful work resembles a poster or a page of a comic book, which makes it easy to understand by both elderly and young receivers.
         The choice of the place is not coincidental. Along this street Germans used to march the residents, doctors and staff of the Wolski Hospital to be executed during the Uprising. Within few day of August 1944 c. 12 thousand people (mainly the residents of the following streets: Szlenkier, Staszic, Wawelberg, Działdowska, Górczewska, Płocka, Żytnia) were executed there. During the so-called Manslaughter of Wola, ordered by Adolf Hitler, c. 65 thousand men, women and children were murdered altogether. It is believed to be the biggest non-recurring massacre of the civilians in Europe during the WW II.

compiled by: Maciej Janaszek-Seydlitz


pictures taken by: Maciej Janaszek-Seydlitz


translated by: Monika Ałasa