The record
A slab from the outer ring of the Wall, built into a monument with bricks from the Gdańsk Shipyard and unveiled by Lech Wałęsa in 2009 beside the main road to Belarus. The Federal Foundation lists it twice, under Kobylany and under Terespol.
At the end of March 2009 three wall monuments left the German district of Oberhavel for its Polish partner county of Biała Podlaska, on the initiative of the district administrator Karl-Heinz Schröter. By the Federal Foundation's account one went to the commune of Międzyrzec Podlaski, one to Kobylany, a village in the rural commune of Terespol, and a third was unveiled in Terespol in August in the presence of Lech Wałęsa and Schröter. The Foundation gives the Kobylany and the Terespol monument an entry each, with the same text on both.
The commune's own bulletin describes one monument, not two. On Sunday 23 August 2009, at the county harvest festival in Kobylany and the day after the commune made him an honorary citizen, Wałęsa unveiled a monument called Wrota Wolności, the Gates of Freedom: bricks from the Gdańsk Shipyard, where Solidarność began, and the fragment of the Berlin Wall given by Oberhavel, painted 1989–2009 with the Solidarność logo breaking through it. Words of John Paul II on solidarity are cut into it, and a plaque below carries Wałęsa's line that without Solidarność there would be no ruins of the Berlin Wall. The bulletin mentions one fragment only, and the Wall Net names two places for the county's Oberhavel segments, Międzyrzec Podlaski and Kobylany. The Terespol unveiling in the Foundation's account is this one, so its two entries are treated here as one monument; if a second slab turns up in the commune, they will be separated again.
The stated purpose was a sign of a division overcome and a memorial to peaceful coexistence between peoples — the kind of formula that reads as boilerplate until you notice where it was placed. The monument stands beside the main road to the Belarusian border, at the eastern edge of the European Union, and Wałęsa called the placing deeply symbolic. The county administrator of Biała Podlaska, Tadeusz Łazowski, hoped openly that the monuments would draw visitors to a remote region, and wished them to carry the message of European unification eastward rather than the fact of division.
The concrete comes from the stretch of Wall that separated the Oberhavel municipality of Glienicke from the Berlin district of Reinickendorf: the outer ring, not the inner-city border that appears in the photographs.
The Berlin Wall Archive's listing for the county, 'Biala Podlaska, PL', is carried on this page. Its title follows the Wall Net's entry, which describes the Oberhavel gift at both Międzyrzec Podlaski and Kobylany but counts one segment and places its map pin on this monument; the listing's own position was the county town's centre, 29 km to the west, and is not shown.
How did it get here?
A gift from the German district of Oberhavel, arranged by its administrator Karl-Heinz Schröter, who had already given monuments to two other partner districts, Tampere in Finland and Hudson County in the United States; from the Glienicke–Reinickendorf section of the border. Built into the Wrota Wolności monument with bricks from the Gdańsk Shipyard and unveiled by Lech Wałęsa on 23 August 2009.
Sources
Listed by the Federal Foundation as #144 and #272 and by the Berlin Wall Archive as #34.
Federal Foundation — Berlin Wall worldwide, site entry (Kobylany) ↗
The three monuments sent to Powiat Bialski at the end of March 2009 on Karl-Heinz Schröter's initiative: one each for Międzyrzec Podlaski and Kobylany, and a third unveiled in Terespol in August 2009 in the presence of Lech Wałęsa and Schröter; their stated purpose, the Glienicke–Reinickendorf origin, the earlier gifts to Tampere and Hudson County, and Tadeusz Łazowski's hopes for the region.
Inventory listingSource accessed 2026-09-17
Federal Foundation — Berlin Wall worldwide, site entry (Terespol) ↗
The Foundation's entry for the Terespol monument, which carries the same text as its Kobylany entry.
Inventory listingSource accessed 2026-09-17
Biuletyn Informacyjny Urzędu Gminy Terespol, wydanie specjalne 2009: Lech Wałęsa w Gminie Terespol ↗
The commune of Terespol's own bulletin: on Sunday 23 August 2009, at the county harvest festival in Kobylany and the day after the commune made him an honorary citizen, Lech Wałęsa unveiled the Wrota Wolności monument, made of bricks from the Gdańsk Shipyard and a fragment of the Berlin Wall given by the district of Oberhavel, painted 1989–2009 and inscribed with words of John Paul II, beside the main road to the Belarusian border.
Institutional sourceSource accessed 2026-09-17
Biuletyn Informacyjny Urzędu Gminy Terespol, wydanie specjalne sierpień 2009 ↗
The commune's announcement: to mark twenty years of free Poland it has put up in the border commune of Terespol a monument of bricks from the Gdańsk Shipyard and a fragment of the Berlin Wall given by the district of Oberhavel, to be unveiled by Lech Wałęsa on 23 August 2009.
Institutional sourceSource accessed 2026-09-17
Biala Podlaska, PL — The Wall Net ↗
The Oberhavel segments in the county of Biała Podlaska stand in two places, Międzyrzec Podlaski and Kobylany, set up in 2009; the inauguration in August 2009 was attended by Lech Wałęsa, and a plaque carries words of Wałęsa and John Paul II. The entry counts one segment, and its embedded map pin lies on the Kobylany monument.
General referenceSource accessed 2026-09-17
Federal Foundation — Berlin Wall worldwide ↗
The source lists this place as a Berlin Wall location. Coordinates, where supplied, are source-reported and may represent a general area. This is not independent verification of authenticity, current presence, or public access.
Inventory listingSource accessed 2026-09-17 · Source record 144
Federal Foundation — Berlin Wall worldwide ↗
The source lists this place as a Berlin Wall location. Coordinates, where supplied, are source-reported and may represent a general area. This is not independent verification of authenticity, current presence, or public access.
Inventory listingSource accessed 2026-09-17 · Source record 272
Berlin Wall Archive ↗
The source lists this place as a Berlin Wall location. Coordinates, where supplied, are source-reported and may represent a general area. This is not independent verification of authenticity, current presence, or public access.
Inventory listingSource accessed 2026-09-17 · Source record 34
Source-reported segments: 1. This is not a separately verified count.
No photograph of this one has been published. If you have taken one, or know when it arrived or who gave it, we would like to hear. Contribute to this record