The sculpture consists of seven figures in various positions (a couple in embrace, a figure covering its face in its hands, a man looking forward, a woman holding a small child), the body of a naked man hanging diagonally in front, stands out from the group. The gestures and expressions of the standing emaciated figures emphasise the grim and hopeless impression of the sculpture.

Sculptor Ladislav Chochole, together with architects Josef Lavička and Jiří Navrátil, were the authors of the winning design of a national competition for the creation of memorial sites in Terezín and Litoměřice in 1968. Only a fraction of the author's planned works came to fruition - mainly the Menorah monument in the Jewish cemetery in Terezín. Chochole originally intended an abstract pylon with a symbolic broken barbed wire as a monument for the National Cemetery. According to a description from 1971, it was to express "liberation from suffering and human enslavement", the combination of pylon and wire was also meant to resemble the shape of a cross. As the realisation of the monument of the National Cemetery was delayed, the artist moved away from the original abstract design in his new proposals. His plans from the late 1970s for example included great reliefs with the faces of prisoners. Finally, in 1987, the art commission of the Czech Fine Arts Fund in Ústí nad Labem approved the sculpture with seven figures. The memorial was originally supposed to be placed on a high pedestal in the shape of the letter T (referring to the word Terezín). According to the authors, the sculpture "does not express a celebration of heroes, but above all depicts simple and ordinary human suffering without the flamboyance of a triumphal monument, but is intended to act as a symbol of great suffering and notorious sacrifice". It was to be unveiled in May 1990, but due to the regime change, the final location of the sculpture (without the planned high pedestal) was not found until 2009. The object was installed at the northern wall of the Small Fortress by the path to the execution site.