Radegast is a former railway station in Łódź, Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

. It was built during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 just beyond the boundary of the Łódź Ghetto to serve as its main transport link to the outside world. In the course of the Holocaust, the station was the place where Jewish and other inhabitants of Łódź were gathered for transport out of the Ghetto and the city to the Kulmhof and Auschwitz death camps. About 150,000 Jews passed through the station on the way to their deaths in the period from January 16, 1942, to August 29, 1944. The station thus had the same significance for Łódź as the better known Umschlagplatz

Umschlagplatz

In the Holocaust, the Umschlagplatz in the Warsaw Ghetto was where Jews gathered for deportation to the Treblinka extermination camp.During the Grossaktion Warsaw, beginning on July 22, 1942, Jews were deported in crowded freight cars to Treblinka. On some days as many as 7,000 Jews were deported...

 had for Warsaw

Warsaw

Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...

.

In 2004, the commemoration ceremonies on the sixtieth anniversary of the destruction of the Łódź Ghetto in 1944 and the departure of the last transport from Radegast spurred efforts to transform the former station into a Holocaust memorial. In 2005 a museum located in the station building was opened. On August 28, 2005, a monument commemorating the Jewish victims who passed through the station was unveiled.