News

On the last Sunday in January, the Union of German Social-Cultural Societies in Poland took the initiative, as it does each year, to organise a commemorative ceremony of the events that happened in the Opole region at the end of the Second World War and after it ended, which today are known in the collective memory and in public communication as the Upper Silesian tragedy.

The name itself refers to the acts of retaliatory violence, initiated with the arrival of the Red Army in January 1945, against German civilians in Upper Silesia. Among those who came to Łambinowice on Sunday 28 January to commemorate the 79th anniversary of the Upper Silesian Tragedy were: Peter Herr - German Consul in Opole, Zuzanna Donath-Kasiura - Deputy Marshall of the Opole Voivodship, Bernard Gaida - Plenipotentiary of the Union of German Social-Cultural Societies in Poland for international cooperation, as well as Rev. Dr. Piotr Talliński, the national and ethnic minorities chaplain, who said a prayer in two languages, Polish and German, at the Cemetery of the Victims of the Labour Camp in Lambinowice. Our Museum was represented by its Director, Dr. Violetta Rezler-Wasielewska.

The prayer, laying of wreaths at the plaques with the names of the victims of the labour camp, and short speeches at the cemetery were preceded by a bilingual service at the St. Mary Magdalene Church in Łambinowice. The final accent of the commemoration was a meeting held in the conference room of the Museum and a lecture entitled ""Internierung" - deportation of Upper Silesians to Soviet gulags in 1945", delivered by Dr. Dariusz Węgrzyn of the Silesian Centre for Freedom and Solidarity in Katowice.