Monuments to the Insurgents and to Korfanty: From Katowice to Wodzisław Śląski

A monument that survived and a monument that returned

Monuments to the Silesian insurgents are found in almost every district of Silesia. Many of them share a similar history: they were put up in the 1920s and 1930s, destroyed by the Germans in September 1939, and recreated after the war in a new form. According to the IPN, the occupiers destroyed all the interwar monuments and plaques honouring the insurgents at that time, and by the end of 1939 they had murdered more than 900 insurgents. Below is an overview of selected places from Katowice to Wodzisław Śląski. The text does not cover all the monuments, only those that have entries on the portal.

The Wings in Katowice

The largest and best known is the Monument to the Silesian Insurgents in Katowice, unveiled on 1 September 1967. It consists of three bronze eagle's wings, which symbolise the three uprisings. The design was prepared by the sculptor Gustaw Zemła and the architect Wojciech Zabłocki, and the casting was made by the Gliwice Technical Equipment Works. The structure weighs about 60 tonnes.

The initiator of the project was Jerzy Ziętek, then chairman of the Voivodeship National Council. The monument was funded by the Capital Reconstruction Fund as a gift from Warsaw for help in rebuilding the city, as the inscription "Warszawa Powstańcom Śląskim" recalls. 116 entries were submitted to the competition. 21 urns with soil from the battlefields were placed beneath the monument.

The names of the places where the fighting took place disappeared from the embankment in 2004-2005 during the construction of the Main Cross-city Road (DTŚ), and in 2016 they returned thanks to the interventions of residents. The whole stands in the Silesian Insurgents' Park, on the site of a former garden by the Tiele-Winckler manor house.

Korfanty in bronze and in stone

The figure of the leader of the Third Uprising is commemorated by two monuments. The Katowice statue stands on Silesian Parliament Square and was unveiled on 19 June 1999. Its author is Zygmunt Brachmański. The monument was placed on the site of the prewar plinth of a planned monument to Józef Piłsudski.

In Korfanty's home region, in Siemianowice Śląskie, the monument from 1986 was made by Mirosław Kiciński. The idea came from the Society of Friends of Siemianowice, and funds were raised through donations. We describe the life of the man these monuments honour in a separate article.

Monuments in Katowice's districts

Katowice has several local insurgent monuments, and their history illustrates well the fate of such places.

• Stara Ligota: a boulder with an eagle was unveiled in 1922 on the initiative of a miner from the Wujek mine. In 1936 the monument was moved and rebuilt, during the war the Germans destroyed it, and the boulder was hidden in the ground. It was recreated in 1962.
• Kostuchna: the first monument, from 1922, was destroyed in 1939. The present obelisk from 2002 is a faithful replica of the old design and bears the names of 85 insurgents from the district.
• Janów-Nikiszowiec: the Germans demolished the prewar monument of 1922 in 1939. A new obelisk was put up after the war in a different place, on a small square on Zamkowa Street.
• Szopienice: the first Freedom Monument of 1924 was destroyed in 1939. The present obelisk was unveiled again in 1992.

Piaśniki, Knurów and Wodzisław

In Świętochłowice, the monument in Heiloo Park commemorates nine participants of the First Uprising, shot in August 1919 by Grenzschutz units. The obelisk of 1937 was demolished in 1939, and in the 1970s it was rebuilt as a granite slab. The history of the uprisings is also told by the Silesian Uprisings Museum, housed in a neo-Gothic building from 1907, the former seat of the Donnersmarck estate administration.

In Knurów, the monument on Dworcowa Street from 1923 commemorates Paweł Hora and Florian Henel. After the war it was rebuilt as the Monument of Gratitude to the Red Army, and in 1995 its original appearance was restored.

The largest monument in this group stands in Wodzisław Śląski. The Monument to the Silesian Insurgents from 1975 takes the form of marching insurgents, and is regarded as one of the largest monuments devoted to the uprisings in Poland. The author of the design is Jerzy Kwiatkowski, and the surroundings were designed by Mieczysław Król. The monument bears the dates 1919, 1920 and 1921 and pairs of places in the Wodzisław area where fighting took place: Wodzisław and Jastrzębie, Pszów and Radlin, Godów and Gołkowice, Olza and Odra. The monument stands on Wojciech Korfanty Square, where the town's commemorations of 3 May and 11 November are held.

Who tells the stories of these figures today

If, after seeing the monuments, you would like to learn about the lives of the insurgents and the people connected with them, visit the multimedia exhibition of the Upper Silesian Pantheon in Katowice. According to the institution's website, it commemorates, among others, the Silesian insurgents.