One of the most iconic statues in Jersey City will be moved, at least temporarily, from its location near the Exchange Place PATH Station to clear the way for creation of a green space plaza.
The Kaytn Massacre Memorial, which has stood in the center of the cobblestone plaza near Grundy Pier since 1991, will be temporarily stored at the city’s Department of Public Works, while the Exchange Place Special Improvement District moves ahead with plans to renovate the Exchange Place waterfront.
But officials will not guarantee that the statue will be returned to its original and prominent location once work is complete.
This has raised an outcry from other officials and members of the Polish community, including the Polish ambassador to the United States, Piotr Wilczek.
“Our government is very concerned about this,” he said. “This monument is well-known in Poland. This is not just a local parochial issue. I visit that site each year on the anniversary of the massacre and at other times. The president of Poland has been there. This isn’t just about the Polish people who died. There were 400 Jews that died there as was as the chief Rabbi of Poland. This is a big deal.”
Wilczek said that the site where it rests is appropriate and should remain where it is.
“This should be a concern for any veterans of World War II who fought in that war,” he said. “And this is a work designed by a world-class artist.”
Ward E Councilman James Solomon said he is not opposed to relocating the statue, but said that SID officials have acted without first consulting the local community.
“When you do something like this, you need to talk to the community first,” Solomon said. “There is been no community outreach.”
A monument to a tragedy
The Kaytn memorial is a 34-foot-tall monument that has been a fixture at its current location since 1991. The statue was originally proposed for another location on Montgomery Street, but ended up in one of the most prominent positions on the Jersey City waterfront. It has been a frequent subject of conversation among tourists, who pose under it as they travel in and out of the city via PATH or ferry.
The statue depicts a soldier, a bayoneted rifle embedded in his back, hands ignominiously bound at the wrists, his body frozen in an unnatural contortion.
Crafted by Polish sculptor Andrzej Pitynski in his Mercerville workshop, the memorial commemorates more than 15,000 Polish military men, intellectuals, and prisoners of war who were murdered from 1939 to 1940 by agents of the former Soviet Union’s secret police.
The monument denotes one of the more atrocious incidents in which several thousand Polish soldiers were marched bound and gagged into Katyn Forest in the spring of 1940. They were executed and buried in mass graves. For a half century, the Soviet government denied any role in the massacre.
The memorial was financed by donations from New Jersey’s Polish community and located in what was then the core of the Polish community in Jersey City.
The memorial was constructed starting in 1989 over a period of 18 months. The granite base was the first to appear, in September of that year, with no explanatory plaques, just the inscription “Katyn 1940,” leaving some Exchange Place workers puzzled about the monument’s meaning.
The mystery was cleared up the following spring, when plaques explaining the memorial’s significance were attached. At a special ceremony in April of 1990, a bronze eagle containing soil from Katyn Forest was affixed to the front of the pedestal.
It took another year to complete the memorial, when Pitynski’s striking sculpture of a dying soldier was unveiled with great ceremony on May 19, 1991.
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“The monument in Exchange Place is part of history, so leave it alone.” – Richard Boggiano
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Changing demographics
In the past, the Exchange Place area had a strong Polish community, in particular at Our Lady of Czestochowa Church on nearby Sussex Street. The area around the statue became a gathering place for mourners in 2010 when a plane filled with Polish people crashed in Russia. But the Polish community has largely diminished in the area over the last decade as new residential development has brought in other groups.
“While I think we need green space in that area, I think the SID failed to do any community outreach,” said Solomon.
Michael DeMarco, chairman of the Exchange Place SID, has described the statute as “a little gruesome” and possibly not appropriate for its current location in front of the Exchange Place PATH station.
As the Polish community in Jersey City has diminished, development has brought in a whole different ethnic population mix that may not have ties to the statue or its history.
DeMarco has been a leading voice in revitalizing the Exchange Place waterfront, seeking to make it into a viable neighborhood with a mix of local business and other features that would accommodate the new population moving in.
Exchange Place has coffee shops and nearby restaurants. Many of these are focused on day time office traffic. Many are closed at night, even though new development has brought residents to live in the area. The waterfront neighborhood is largely deserted at night. The changes DeMarco is planning would change this.
Mayor Steven Fulop said the statue will be temporarily stored by the DPW so it will not get damaged.
“We’re doing engineering work as we prepare for repairs to the area and community space and green park with seating,” he said.
Boggiano is a leading critic
Councilman Richard Boggiano said he learned of the issue by accident.
“I was at a meeting and was informed by a party that they want to move the Katyn Massacre monument in Exchange Place so they can create a park in that area,” Boggiano said. “An attorney at the meeting verified this and I told him to stay away from this thought of moving the monument. He said it would be put back eventually and I told him ‘like the Peter Stuyvesant Statue’.”
The statute of Peter Stuyvesant, which was originally located near McGinley Square, was moved to the campus of the Hudson County Community College on Sip Avenue more than a decade ago. And despite protests from council members and members of the freeholder board, the statue has not been returned to his original location.
“I’m afraid the same thing is going to happen with this statue,” Boggiano said, leading the protest against the move.
“I want the SID to leave Jersey City history alone,” Boggiano said. “The monument in Exchange Place is part of history, so leave it alone.”
Al Sullivan may be reached at asullivan@hudsonreporter.com.
