Miła 18

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Miła 18 memorial
Kopiec Anielewicza (Anielewicz Mound)
ulica Miła
Warsaw, September 2018

“The bunker at Miła 18 was constructed by a group of underworld smugglers in 1943. The ŻOB fighters arrived there after their own hideout, at 29 Miła Street, had been discovered. The smugglers who had built it were helping the ŻOB as guides. On 8 May 1943, three weeks after the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when the bunker was found out by the Nazis, there were around 300 people inside. The smugglers surrendered, but the ŻOB command, including Mordechaj Anielewicz, the leader of the uprising, stood firm. The Nazis threw tear gas into the shelter to force the occupants out. Anielewicz, his girlfriend Mira Fuchrer and many of his staff committed mass suicide by ingesting poison rather than surrender, though a few fighters who did neither managed to get out of a rear exit and later fled from the ghetto through the canals to the ‘Aryan side’ at Prosta Street on May 10. In July 1945 suriviors of the Jewish Underground (Among them Simcha Rotem) visted the ruins above the Command bunker. The bodies of Jewish fighters were not exhumed after 1945 and the place gained the status of war memorial. In 1946, the monument known as Anielewicz Mound, made of the rubble of Miła houses, was erected. A commemorative stone with the inscription in Polish and Yiddish was placed on top of the mound. In 2006, a new obelisk designed by Hanna Szmalenberg and Marek Moderau was added to the memorial.” (Miła 18, Wikipedia)