News

In the Department of Collection and Conservation are pending inventory works on memorabilia left by Ensign Mieczysław Kąkol. The valuable collection, numbering  38 objects and pertaining to a very characteristic group of cadets among Polish POWs, was given to the Museum by his son Marek, in January.

On July 22, 1930, Ensign Mieczysław Kąkol (born in 1920), graduated from divisional course for Ensigns of reserve of the 16^th Pomeranian Infantry Divisions, organized for the 65^th Starograd Infantry Regiment. He participated in the defending fights, and on September 19, 1939, near Łowicz was taken to the German captivity. As a POW with numbers 1019 and 299060, he was detained in Oflag VII B Eichstätt, Stalag VI B Neu-Versen and Stalag VI G Bonn-Duisdorf.

Among the valuable gifts are prisoner-of-war postcards from 1944 and correspondence concerning a parcel sent from the United States. The attention is drawn by interesting photographs of prisoners-of-war, probably taken in Stalag VI G Bonn-Duisdorf and, subjected to it, the Arbeitskommando 281 Hoffnungsthal working party. The collection also includes the pre-war and post-war documents of Ensign Mieczysław Kąkol, and  among them: a pass of the former prisoner-of-war with a stamp of the Polish Repatriation Mission, a pass of the "Brotherly Aid" Association of Polish Students in Munich, a credit book of a mechanical engineering student at the university organized by the UNRRA in Munich for the so called "dipsów", or a certificate of the National Repatriation Office confirming the return of the former prisoner-of- war to Poland.

Thank you very much for the gift!