Monument to Fallen Shipyard Workers

Editor's review

Commemorating the victims of the December 1970 shipyard strikes, the erection of the Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers was a major stipulation of the fledgling Solidarity movement during the shipyard strikes of 1980. After the communist government's capitulation, the monument and the square it occupies became a major rallying point for Solidarity. Three steel crosses (cast by the workers themselves) rise 42 metres over Solidarity Square, weighing in at 139 tonnes, with three symbolic anchors literally crucified to them. The rather unsettling inscription from Czeslaw Milosz himself reads, "You who have harmed simple man, mocking him with your laughter, you kill him, someone else will be born, and your deeds and words will be written down..."

Editor
Editor & Gdansk Local