News

The Museum has commemorated the 86th anniversary of the invasion of the Soviet Union on Poland, by engaging in a few public events held between 16 and 19 September – beginning with the opening of an exhibition in Łambinowice, through the official celebration organized in Opole by the authorities of the Voivodeship, into the participation in a conference at Katyń Muzeum.

We have already reported on the opening of the exhibition under the title “Testimonies to a crime – documents excavated from the mass graves in Miednoye, Kharkiv and Katyń”. Now it is only to add that accounts on that event appeared in both regional media (among others broadcast by the radio stations: Radio Doxa and Radio Opole) and on the social profiles of our Museum.

During the celebration organized in the Market Square in front of the Municipal Office in Opole our Museum was represented by Deputy Director, Dr Renata Kobylarz-Buła and Anna Chłądzyńska-Gądek of the Department of PR and Communication. Then, the group of persons honouring the victims of the Soviet aggression included, among others, also Maria Matlachowska, representative of Opole branch of the Association of Families of Katyń, who – on the preceding day – had given a speech at the opening of the exhibition in our Museum.

In turn, on 18 September, the international conference entitled “Witnesses and Testimonies of Katyń Crime”, which was organized by the Museum of Polish Army and Katyn Museum – a branch of the former, was attended by the Director of our Museum, Dr Violetta Rezler-Wasielewska, Head of the Scientific Department, Dr Piotr Stanek, and Iwona Cichoń-Halot representing the Archive. The program of the conference was built around four leading problems: perspectives of witnesses, the role of testimonies, application of new technologies supporting reconstruction of facts and the so-called politics over grave. Many of the delivered speeches were clearly of emotional character, full of dramatic overtones – fairly exceptional when it comes to scientific conferences. In the context of the current situation on the international political stage, references to it were unavoidable; so were reflections on the perspective of a war threatening our part of Europe.