Today, a few commemorative plaques can be found at the site of the former Maharshal Synagogue. The tragic history of the ghetto residents is commemorated by the memory trail Lublin. The Memory of the Holocaust, created at the initiative of the Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre Centre in 2017, on the 75th anniversary of the liquidation of the Lublin Ghetto and initiation of Operation Reinhard.The Ghetto. The fate of Lublin Jews during WWIIThe synagogue that witnessed the greatness of the Lublin Jewish community also witnessed its annihilation. Lublin was bombed in the first days of September 1939, shortly after the outbreak of WWII, and German troops entered the city in mid-September. Harassment and persecution followed immediately. In November 1939, Jews living in the modern centre of Lublin were ordered to move to the Jewish Quarter, whose area was gradually decreased, while restrictions intensified. Prayer was forbidden in the synagogue, which from now on served as a shelter for Jews resettled to Lublin from the Polish areas incorporated directly into the Third Reich and as a soup kitchen for the poor. On 24 March 1941, Ernst Zörner, the German Governor of the Lublin District, issued a directive establishing a closed Jewish quarter. All Christians inhabiting it were to be relocated. Initially, the ghetto was not fenced off, but leaving it was forbidden. Jews caught outside the ghetto border without permission were liable to death penalty, and so were people coming to their aid. In February 1942, the ghetto was partially fenced off and divided into A, a bigger part encompassing most of the Jewish Quarter, and B, covering the area of a few streets in the Old Town. The liquidation of the Lublin Ghetto started on the evening of 16 March 1942. The date also marked the beginning of Operation Reinhard, whose main staff had its headquarters in Lublin. Around fifteen hundred people were assembled in the synagogue every night and then, in a column escorted by armed guards with dogs, marched a few kilometres to the railway ramp by the city slaughterhouse. Loaded onto cargo cars, Lublin Jews were transported to the Bełżec extermination camp. The deportations lasted until 14 April 1942. Over 28 thousand people were murdered. A few thousand surviving Jews, assembled in Ghetto B, were relocated to a new ghetto at Majdan Tatarski in the eastern part of the city, between the Plage-Laśkiewicz Airplane Factory (the so-called Flugplatz) and the KL Lublin camp at Majdanek. This ghetto too was liquidated in November 1942 and its inhabitants murdered at Majdanek.Over the next few months, the emptied medieval Jewish Quarter of Lublin was gradually demolished. Around 320 buildings were wiped off the face of the earth. Around a hundred fifty Jewish craftsmen were still alive, doing forced labour in the Gestapo prison at the castle, along with two hundred Christian prisoners. They did not live to see the end of the war. All prisoners from the castle were shot by the retreating Germans on 22 July 1944, on the eve of the liberation by the Soviet Army.The Memory Trail marks the border of the ghetto at Podzamcze and the last route of Lublin Jews taking them to the Umschlagplatz (German for “transhipment place”), from which around 28 thousand people were deported to the extermination camp. The way to the Umschlagplatz is marked with 21 concrete slabs with Hebrew letters on metal bands. Columns of Jews were marched from the Maharshal Synagogue along Ruska, Kalinowszczyzna and Turystyczna Streets up to the railway ramp in the city slaughterhouse. This site is marked with the Non/Memory of the Place art installation, accessed from Zimna Street and placed in a metal container set in the wall of the former slaughterhouse. The area of the ramp can be seen through Hebrew letters cut in the walls of the container. The typeface of these letters is that used in the Lublin edition of the Zohar, printed in 1623. The letters are placed randomly, yet a special place has been assigned to ת (tav), the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet.The borders of the former ghetto were marked with 43 special concrete flagstones. The number symbolically refers to 43 thousand, the number of Jews living in Lublin before the outbreak of WWII. Moreover, four murals were created in selected places within the former ghetto, which quote works of Lublin poets and writers, creating a narrative of the Lublin Jewish town, its life and destruction.