News

The year 2022 at our Museum passed very quickly by implementing many plans. It was possible due to lifting of the state of epidemic COVID-19. Many of them were overshadowed by Russian's invasion of Ukraine.

Moreover, in 2022 as many as 109 museum objects and 1742 cards of the WASt ensemble were subjected to full conservation, and 821 objects were secured from further deterioration. Digitization of the collections was also continued: the registration data of 2750 museum objects were entered into the digital base, and 1883 artefacts received their digital picture form. Additionally, the digital database of Polish prisoners-of-war has increased by nearly 43,861 records.

No less important task of the Museum were educational and popularization activities. Over the last year the visitors to the Museum were able to get familiar with 14 exhibitions, while we made as many as 11 of our mobile exhibitions available to other institutions. It is also worth mentioning the number of educational lessons and classes – 348 in total. Also, in the POW subject matter, a huge part was played by a series of short documentary films ...but that's a different story now (12 episodes broadcast from January to December) and subsequent editions of competitions for children and teenagers.

The calendar of last year's events was not deprived of traditional commemorations, including the most important one of them - the 77th anniversary of the liberation of Stalag 344 Lamsdorf. The commemoration event was accompanied by the opening of Place with a Scar exhibition, which found positive acceptation and appreciation – in December, just for this exhibition, the Museum was awarded with the Special Award of the Marshal of the Opole Voivodeship for the Museum Event of the Year 2021.

The work of the Museum was greatly influenced by activities related to the project "Freedom is in them. Warsaw Insurgents 1944-2022" (founded by the Multiannual Government Programme "Niepodległa"). As part of it, an open-air exhibition was created entitled "The End and the Beginning. Warsaw Insurgents in the German Captivity", presented, inter alia, at the Polish Parliament, and a number of educational and artistic activities were carried out, among them, the certainly noticeable but also surprising action entitled "They were here", on Polregio trains on the Opole-Nysa-Opole route.

Meanwhile, in June 2022, in cooperation with Professor Adam Szpaderski, was inaugurated a consortium: ‘League of POW Remembrance’ Network with the main aim of cooperation of institutions in the scope of dissemination of the knowledge about history of POWs and related issues. The Museum assumed the honoured role of its leader.

Another important undertaking launched last year is the interdisciplinary project 'Science for Society, Society for Science at the Site of National Remembrance in Łambinowice'. Its key element is archaeological work at the post-camp site in Łambinowice. The project will also be continued this year, so we will regularly report on it and all the interesting events we have planned.