Białystok. The Zamenhof monument has returned to its place. Earlier, someone had knocked it over, destroying the fixings.

“Great! Now just catch the perpetrators and punish them in an exemplary manner!” “I don't understand who was bothered by the monument.” “Take care, Ludwik.” These were some of the comments that appeared under a post on the Facebook profile of the Białystok city hall, which included photos of the monument to young Ludwik Zamenhof.

As we wrote at the beginning of the week, the sculpture was torn from the sidewalk and knocked over. Vice President Rafał Rudnicki called it an “exceptional act of vandalism” on social media. He assumes that someone vandalized the monument on the night from Saturday (August 10) to Sunday or on Sunday morning. Now – after the elements that attached it to the ground have been repaired – the sculpture has been returned to its place.

The police are looking for the perpetrator (or perpetrators) of vandalism.

– The actions are being taken to destroy someone else's property. The penalty for this is from three months to five years of imprisonment – informed Malwina Trochimczuk from the Municipal Police Headquarters in Białystok on Tuesday.

Ludwik Zamenhof was born on December 15, 1859 in Białystok and spent his childhood there. At that time, it was a city of 30,000, culturally and nationally diverse. Living in such an environment, young Zamenhof decided to create the foundations of an international language. The idea was to find a solution to avoid conflicts between people of different nationalities and religions.

After moving to Warsaw, he continued working on the language. Using the pseudonym Dr. Esperanto (Hopeful), he published a textbook for learning an international language. He died on April 14, 1917.

The monument to young Zamenhof is a project submitted to the 2017 civic budget, on the 100th anniversary of Zamenhof's death. It was placed on Zamenhofa Street, where the family home of the creator of Esperanto once stood.

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As the creators of the monument explained earlier, the idea was to show a young boy walking down the street lost in thought and stopping, which is why the monument does not stand on any pedestal. However, the letters scattered around it are to symbolize the voices of people and the difficulties in communicating with each other, they are also to be a metaphor for the different cultures that met in this market, and this was to inspire young Ludwik to create a language.