Umschlagplatz Monument

This guide to the Umschlagplatz Monument in Warsaw centers on the freight yard where, between 1942 and 1943, more than three hundred thousand people were marched from the Warsaw Ghetto onto trains bound for the Treblinka death camp, sometimes ten thousand in a single day. It follows the story of pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, pulled from the column here by a ghetto policeman who recognized his face from Warsaw's prewar concert halls, and later the subject of the film The Pianist. Some who stood in that line waited through the night before their turn came.