Ossip Zadkine's 1953 bronze, with its anguished raised arms and the hole struck through the figure's chest, stands on the edge of the Leuvehoofd basin near the Maritime Museum — Rotterdam's central memorial to the 14 May 1940 Luftwaffe bombing that destroyed the entire medieval city centre and killed nearly 900 people. The blast wave from the bombing flattened roughly 25,000 buildings; the cleared zone, marked today by the Brandgrens, defined the city that Rotterdam would rebuild itself as.
The sculpture is set on a low plinth in an open square so the figure stands against the river and the modern skyline behind it — the whole composition is one of the most moving public memorials in Europe.