Pawiak Prison – a symbol of the struggle for independence of several generations of Poles – functioned from 1835 to 1944. Its walls isolated inmates, the vast majority of whom were political prisoners who first took up arms against the Russian invaders, and later – against the German occupiers.

The decision to build the institution was taken in 1829. Construction lasted from 1830 to 1836 and the first inmates were incarcerated there in 1835. The newly erected building was located between Dzielna Street, now defunct Więzienna Street, and Pawia Street, from whose name the customary term “Pawiak” came to apply to not only the building, but also to the entire prison complex. In the 1880s, a need arose for a female ward in Pawiak, for which the neighbouring two-storey court building was adapted. When the Russo-Turkish War, commonly referred to as the Serbian War, broke out, it housed a hospital for Russian soldiers brought in from the front, and so in the following years the female ward came to be known as Serbia.

Initially, criminal prisoners were sent to Pawiak, while political prisoners were put in the 10th Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel. The situation changed after the outbreak of the January Uprising in 1863, when the citadel walls could not accommodate all the detainees. Then, a decision was made to send political prisoners to Pawiak.

The most tragic time in the history of the prison was the period of World War II. It was then that captured members of the underground and random passersby arrested on the street during roundups were held within its walls. Not only individuals, men or women, were sent to Pawiak, but also entire families with small children and expectant mothers in advanced pregnancy. Between October 1939 and August 1944, around 100,000 people were imprisoned in Pawiak, of whom 37,000 died in the so-called Warsaw death ring (Palmiry, Magdalenka, Las Kabacki, Wólka Węglowa, Wydmy Łuże, Rembertów, Wawer, Jabłonna area), and later in the ruins of the ghetto. Nearly 60,000 prisoners were sent to concentration camps: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Stutthof, Majdanek, and Ravensbrück.

On 21 August 1944, as part of a planned escape from Warsaw from the approaching front, the Germans blew up the Pawiak prison complex. The compelling body of evidence of the crimes that was buried in the ruins included the register of its inmates. Therefore, we will probably never know the names of all individuals held in Pawiak prison. What is important, however, is that despite the passage of time, the memory of the victims of this terrible place is still cultivated.

Joanna Gierczyńska

The reverse of the coin depicts the Monument Tree of Pawiak against the background of prison bars. The obverse features a fragment of the entrance to the Pawiak Prison Museum.

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