The IPN’s Katowice Branch and the City Hall in Chorzów would like to invite you to the ceremony of unveiling the sculpture entitled "Dłoń" (hand), which will commemorate the place where the "Bismarckhütte" camp operated in the years 1944 - 1945 as a branch of the German concentration and extermination camp KL Auschwitz - Birkenau. The event, under the patronage of the European Parliament, will take place on 25 May 2021 at 12.00 in Chorzów. The monument will be unveiled by Andrzej Pilecki, Captain Witold Pilecki’s son.

The ceremony is going to mark the end of a project dedicated to commemorating the place where the "Bismarckhütte" camp, a sub-camp of the German KL Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, operated in the years 1944-1945. The sculpture "Dłoń"  by Tomasz Wenklar which will be unveiled is a synthesis of concrete fence posts arranged in the shape of a human hand. The severity of the texture and the material from which the sculpture is made refer to the concrete pillars in Auschwitz, delineating the outline of the camp, and thus separating prisoners from normal life and the outside world. The shape of the hand and the wires form a sphere isolated from normal space - a symbolic form of a cage.

The project was funded by the Institute of National Remembrance and the city of Chorzów on the initiative of Grzegorz Rosengarten.

The ceremony will be accompanied by an open-air exhibition -" Widma Pamięci" by Maciej Niesłony, which presents the portraits of prisoners of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camps and the post-war communist labor camp "Zgoda" in Świętochłowice.

At the end of Tuesday's celebrations, on the 73rd anniversary of the death of Captain Witold Pilecki, a delegation from the Katowice Branch of the IPN and the City Hall in Chorzów together with the son of Captain Andrzej Pilecki and the Mayor of Chorzów, Andrzej Kotala, will lay flowers under the plaque dedicated to Captain Witold Pilecki located on a square also named after him.