News

A team consisting of Dr. Violetta Rezler-Wasielewska, Director of the CMJW, her deputy, Dr. Renata Kobylarz-Buła, and Dr Piotr Stanek, head of the Research Department, spent two days in the neighbourhood of the German town of Senne. This region has strong prisoner-of-war connotations owing to the fact that there was Stalag 326 (VI K) Senne during the Second World War.

There was mainly held Soviet POWs (90%) in the Stalag, whose fate was particularly difficult because, as at Lamsdorf, they were subjected to extermination by means of starvation and terror. Nevetheless, it was also a place of isolation for Poles – the Warsaw insurgents taken prisoner, who were also subjected to very hard work, including underground labour in the construction of adits. After the war, on the other hand, the camp’s buildings were used to held civilians: those who were suspected of war crimes, key figures involved in trade and industry in the Third Reich and former members of the NSDAP and Nazi organisations.

Due to the prisoner-of-war context of these two sites, the Museum representatives Dr. Violetta Rezler-Wasielewska, Dr. Renata Kobylarz-Buła and Dr. Piotr Stanek, on 21-22 September, went on a trip to the Kleinenbremen Mining Museum and the Memorial Site at Stalag 326 (VI K) Senne and the Memorial and Documentation Site at KZ Porta Westfalica. The trip combined several objectives: to establish cooperation with the German partners, to bring to the first of these places our bilingual outdoor exhibition "The End and the Beginning. The Warsaw Insurgents in Captivity" and to discuss plans for next year's conference on Polish prisoners-of-war in Germany.