A total of 18 memory stones will be unveiled at five sites in Warsaw on Saturday and in the central city of Łódź, Libeskind’s birthplace, on Sunday.
One of these Stolpersteine (literally "stumbling stones") will be placed at 44 Lipowa St. in Łódź, where Nachman Libeskind, the architect’s father and Holocaust survivor, lived before World War II.
His sister Rózia, who also survived the Holocaust, as well as eight members of his family who perished in the Nazi German extermination camp in Chełmno-on-Ner, will also be commemorated in Łódź.
In Warsaw, brass cobblestone memorials will be set into the pavement outside the last residences of Daniel Libeskind’s uncle, Natan Libeskind, and of Cywia Blausztejn, who lost her life in WWII together with four of her eight children.
Natan Libeskind was one of the leaders of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising. He is believed to have perished in the Nazi German Treblinka extermination camp.
Libeskind was born in Łódź in 1946 into a family of Polish Jews. He lived in Poland until the age of 11, when his family left for Israel and later the United States.
He has stressed his Polish roots and his sentimental attachment to Łódź, his hometown, on many occasions. In 2022, he received the city’s honorary citizenship.
Libeskind’s major projects include the Jewish Museum in Berlin, the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site in New York's Manhattan, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, and the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester.
He also designed Złota 44, a landmark 192-metre glass skyscraper in the centre of Warsaw.
(mk)