Memorial to the Defenders of Hel

A park near the train station has a memorial to the 1939 defence of the town during the German invasion. Hel was the last place in Poland to surrender; a garrison of some 3000 Polish soldiers defended it until 2 October. The peninsula became a battlefield again on 5 April 1945 when about 60,000 Germans were caught in a Red Army bottleneck. They lay down their arms on 9 May, making it the last piece of Polish territory to be liberated.