The Monument to the Cursed soldiers: Glass, memory, and resistance
© arcomai I Monument to the Cursed Soldiers.
In the heart of Wrocław, a city layered with history and its wounds, stands the Monument to the Cursed Soldiers (Pomnik Żołnierzy Niezłomnych), an artwork that subverts commemorative conventions through the language of glass and light. Designed by artists Tomasz and Konrad Urbanowicz — in collaboration with the firm Archiglass — the monument is a striking example of how public art can become a vehicle for memory, ethical tension, and political reflection. The choice of glass as the primary material is itself a statement: fragile yet resilient, transparent yet sharp, glass embodies the dual nature of the Cursed Soldiers — Polish anti-communist partisans persecuted after World War II. The vertical panels, engraved and layered, evoke figures drawn from archival photographs, emerging from the material like apparitions, presences that demand not to be forgotten. Natural light filters through the work, transforming it throughout the day, as if memory itself were subject to shifts, revelations, and obscurations.
© arcomai I Monument to the Cursed Soldiers.
Unveiled on May 8, 2024 — the anniversary of the end of World War II — the monument was funded through a donation from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. It stands as a solemn, non-rhetorical tribute to the soldiers who sacrificed their lives for Poland’s freedom. The compositional structure is rigorous, almost ascetic. Geometric forms are arranged in a sequence that evokes both military order and the fragmentation of identity. There is no celebratory emphasis, but rather a dramatic tension that emerges from the contrast between the verticality of the panels and their irregular placement. The monument does not impose a singular interpretation: it invites the viewer to move around it, to seek angles, to question. The Urbanowicz brothers do not merely commemorate — they interrogate.
© arcomai I Monument to the Cursed Soldiers.
The monument becomes an ethical space, where the memory of the Cursed Soldiers — often controversial, divisive, politicized — is restored to its human dimension. Not marble heroes, but broken men, forgotten fighters, victims of a history that has yet to find peace. In this sense, the work positions itself as a monument that does not glorify, but problematizes. Though rooted in Polish history, the Pomnik Żołnierzy Niezłomnych speaks to all of Europe. At a time when public memory risks becoming a tool of polarization, the artists offer an alternative: an art that does not simplify, but deepens; that does not divide, but questions. The monument thus becomes a place of passage, of meditation, of encounter between past and present. A silent — yet powerful — invitation not to forget, and to continue seeking meaning in the complexity of history.
© arcomai I Monument to the Cursed Soldiers.