News

There can be no doubt regarding Museum statistics: the past year has been a very fruitful one for the Department of Collections and Conservation in one of its primary fields of activity which was the acquisition of more POW artefacts. This is an arduous process that requires, among other things, social competence, and is carried out through contacts with donors and bidders, the acceptance of donations and purchases from individuals and collectors.

We were greatly assisted in expanding the collection owing to donations by the "Saved Memorabilia, Preserved Memory" campaign which aims to preserve POW artefacts save them from oblivion, with the support of people of goodwill, such as the violin maker Katarzyna Bednarz, thanks to whom we were able to prevent a violin from Oflag VII A Murnau from destruction. The campaign generated a large number of letters, email and social media messages. Also, significant were the recommendations of people who had already made contact with the Museum and, on the basis of this experience, gladly directed our workers to further relatives of prisoners-of-war and, by setting an example for others, encouraged potential donors to entrust the Museum with valuable artefacts.

The year 2024 brought the total number of 1,682 various testimonies to the fate of several dozen World War II POWs to the Museum. They came both from donations and purchases made mainly with funds from the ‘treasure box’, i.e. public collections. The artefacts were acquired mainly from Polish people. As many as one quarter of them were residents of the Masovian Voivodeship, chiefly living in the capital, 16% of donors are from the Greater Poland Voivodeship, 11% from the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, and 8% each from the Lesser Poland and Opole Voivodeships. Only the Lubusz and Podlaskie Voivodeships do not appear in the tables. Donors from abroad include descendants of British soldiers from Great Britain, Canada and Australia who were held in Stalag VIII B (344) Lamsdorf. A mention should be made of the cooperation with Sławomir Witkowski, a teacher and history enthusiast from Łambinowice, which resulted in 13 objects being donated to the Museum, mainly correspondence - both POW and sent out from military training ground in Lamsdorf.

The vast majority of new objects in the Museum's collection are letters, postcards and telegrams. POW correspondence accounts for as much as 77% of all donated artefacts. Thus, in the largest ensemble of 721 objects (the legacy of Second Lieutenant Jan Julian Lewandowski, a prisoner of Oflag VII A Murnau), correspondence accounts for almost 88% of the entire collection. Other objects donated in 2024 include: archival photographs (13%), graphics and drawings (5%), official documents produced for soldiers and prisoners-of-war (3%), personal items (2%) or paintings done in POW camps (1%). Among the new artefacts, two inconspicuous objects stand out: a decorative box presumably made near Piotrków Trybunalski by a Soviet POW and a mug belonging to an Italian POW, Aldo Pezzato, from Stalag 130 Zambrow. These odds and ends, made from available to POWs materials, on which they engraved their names and/or surnames, were a form of repayment or gratitude for life-saving food.

Many thanks for all these selfless gestures!

We encourage you to watch Krzysztof Harupa's interview with Maria Beczkiewicz, a relative of Captain Zygmunt Kokociński, a prisoner of Oflag VII A Murnau:

Produced by: Sławomir Mielnik/CMJW.