Mural - Boy from the Ghetto - Piotr Saul and Damian Idzikowski, 2016

On ul. Organizacji WiN in Bałuty, on a building wall, a portrait of a boy has been painted. This is one of the murals in a series recalling the stories of children who survived the Łódź ghetto during the German occupation, then known as Litzmannstadt Getto. The portrait was created as part of the same series that covered roughly a dozen locations in Bałuty, each close to a place connected with the fate of the person depicted.

Boy from the Łódź ghetto

The mural commemorates the fate of children confined to the Łódź ghetto, where the horrors of war affected the youngest residents of the district as painfully as adults. The boy depicted on the mural at Organizacji WiN has no established name. As with most portraits in the series, his face comes from an archival photograph, but without accompanying documentation identifying a specific person.

Children without a name

From the entire series dedicated to children of Bałuty, only four people are known by name and surname: Dawid Sierakowiak, Abramek Koplowicz, Salek Berliński and Abramek Cytryn. The remaining murals, including the one at Organizacji WiN, depict anonymous children. The authors deliberately did not assign them invented identities; the portrait is meant to testify to the fate of a child from the ghetto in general, not to a single, now unknown biography.

Authors and series

The mural was painted by Piotr Saul, affiliated with the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, and Damian Idzikowski from the Łódź Academy of Fine Arts. The project, known as the Memory Murals Trail "Children of Bałuty", is run by the Association "Na co dzień i od święta" with support from the Museum of the History of Poland in Warsaw, under the programme "Patriotism of Tomorrow". Subsequent murals in the series were created in stages over several years, covering Polish, Jewish and Romani children.

Practical information

• Address: ul. Organizacji WiN, Bałuty, Łódź.
• The mural is on the external wall of a building, in public space, accessible without restrictions.
• A few dozen metres further stands another mural from the series, Girl from the Romani camp, dedicated to victims of the Roma camp in the same ghetto.
• Broader context on the history of the Łódź ghetto and its residents is provided by the Centre for Dialogue named after Marek Edelman.
• Nearby is also Park of the Survivors, established in memory of Łódź Jews.
• This is a memorial site; it is appropriate to maintain quiet and solemnity in this space.