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We took part in the celebration of the ANZAC Day
In Petersweiler (today’s Pietrzykowice), in the POW work detachment E303 subordinated to Stalag VIII B Lamsdorf, fates of soldiers from Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain and Canada intersected. Their hard everyday reality was filled with work in the local sugar factory and at the railway siding in Smolec. Although since those days over eight decades have passed, the memory of the POWs and their presence in Lower Silesia is still alive.
Last Saturday, on 25 April, workers of our Museum: Dr Anna Wickiewicz and Dr Michał Jakubik of the Education and Exhibitions Department, took the opportunity to participate in the celebration of the ANZAC Day, organized by the local community of Smolec and Pietrzykowice.
The celebration began at noon in Smolec, where to the accompaniment of a trumpet and the signal The Last Post tribute was paid to the victims. Another stage of the celebration took place in Pietrzykowice, following the transfer of the participants to the place. It is there that in the shade of the park trees, the national anthems were sounded and the delegations laid wreaths at the monument commemorating the POWs. A moving moment was the Ceremony of Dog Tails – a symbolic act of restoring the names and surnames to the forced labourers and soldiers who had remained anonymous to date, the turmoil of war having cast them there.
This year’s event connected the solemnity of history and inter-generational education. Beside the reflections over the fates of the POWs, the day room being the venue of the celebration bustled with activities: from workshops of Aborigenal art, through building the “Radio of Hope”, into joint baking and tasting the famous ANZAC cakes. The whole was crowned with a bonfire and singing songs together with scouts.
The presence of the representatives of our Museum in the ceremony and in the event is a proof that the history of the Lamsdorf camps does not close within the walls of the CMJW. It lives on in such places as Pietrzykowice, where local patriots cherish the memory of “their” Australians and New Zealanders with passion and devotion.
