Further Stolpersteine (Memorial Stones) commemorating the victims of the Holocaust were officially unveiled in Warsaw. From 27 June 2026, new paving stones with brass plaques can be seen on Twarda Street and at the junction of Pawia and Karmelicka Streets. The ceremony was attended by the world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind, who, together with families and guests, paid tribute to his relatives murdered in Poland during the Second World War. Letters were read aloud, stories were told, and the memory of those whom history had sought to erase was restored.
Stolpersteine in Warsaw and the largest memorial to the victims of Nazism
Warsaw’s Stolpersteine are part of the international Stolpersteine project, created by the Berlin-born artist Gunter Demnig. The initiative was launched in 1992 and has since grown into the world’s largest decentralised memorial dedicated to the victims of Nazism. The brass cubes commemorate Jews, Roma and Sinti, homosexuals, dissidents, Jehovah’s Witnesses and all those murdered by adherents of Nazi ideology. The project’s motto is a quote from the Talmud stating that a person is only forgotten when their name is forgotten. For this reason, each stone tells the story of a specific individual and helps to preserve the memory of their fate.
The Blausztejn family have returned to Twarda Street
The first ceremony took place on Twarda Street, where, before the Second World War, a tenement house stood at number 11. Cywia Blausztejn, a widow raising eight children, lived there. She supported her family by working as a seamstress and embroiderer. Even before the outbreak of the war, her two eldest daughters, Estera and Chawa, had left for Palestine. Only Nechemia and Dora survived the Holocaust. In September 1939, Dora fled Warsaw towards the east. She ended up in the Jaja labour camp near Novosibirsk, and after her release she found herself in Uzbekistan. There she met Nachman Libeskind, whom she later married.
The memorial stones laid in Twarda Street are dedicated to Cywia Blausztejn and her daughters: Bronia, Hela, Roma, Renia and Dora. After several decades, they are together again in their home – in Warsaw.
During the ceremony, Daniel Libeskind read the poem ‘To’ by Adam Zagajewski from the collection *Ode to Plurality*:
That which weighs so heavily and pulls one down,
that which hurts like pain and stings like a slap,
it may be a stone or an anchor.
Hero of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The second part of the ceremony took place at the former address of 16 Pawia Street, now situated at the junction of Pawia and Karmelicka Streets. Natan Libeskind, a Bund activist originally from Łódź and the son of Chaim Haskiel and Rachel Lea Libeskind, lived there. During the occupation, he was one of the organisers of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. His wife, Dora Kociołek, was born in Zurich; she later lived in Germany and then in Łódź, where she met her future husband. No photographs of her have survived. According to historians, both were most likely murdered at Treblinka.
After the war, Natan Libeskind was posthumously awarded the Order of Virtuti Militari. The medal was kept for many years by his brother Nachman Libeskind, one of two siblings who survived the Holocaust. The initiative to erect the Memorial Stones dedicated to the family came from Nachman’s children: Annette Libeskind-Berkovits and Daniel Libeskind.
During the unveiling of the stones on Pawia Street, the architect read a poem by Emily Dickinson beginning with the words ‘Speech is a prank of Parliament’:
Speeches are the pranks of parliaments.
Tears are but a reflex of the nerves.
But the heart that bears the heaviest burden,
is most often silent.
Daniel Libeskind and a personal history of remembrance
Daniel Libeskind was born on 12 May 1946 in Łódź, the son of Nachman Libeskind and Dora Blausztejn, both Holocaust survivors. In 1957, the family emigrated to Israel, and two years later they moved to the United States. Initially, Daniel pursued a career in music as an accordionist, but ultimately chose architecture. He gained international renown for his design of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, which opened in 2001. He is also the architect behind the redevelopment of the World Trade Centre site following the attacks of 11 September 2001, as well as numerous museums, skyscrapers and public buildings in various countries, including Poland.
New Stolpersteine in Warsaw
Daniel Libeskind took part in the Warsaw ceremonies primarily as a relative of those whose names have returned to the streets of their city after more than 80 years. Joining him in paying tribute to the Blausztejn and Libeskind families were the descendants of those commemorated, representatives of the Association of Descendants of Holocaust Survivors, a representative of the Korczakianum and others.
The Stones of Remembrance will not restore the homes destroyed during the war or bring back the people murdered during the Holocaust. However, they ensure that the former addresses once again echo with the names of their former residents, and that their stories remain present in the everyday life of Warsaw.
source: Association of Descendants of Holocaust Survivors
photos: editorial team
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Ceremony on Twarda Street
Ceremony on Pawia Street
Topic: Stolpersteine in Warsaw. Created for the family of Daniel Libeskind
