The operations of the Department of Museums and Monuments of Polish Martyrology were launched in April 1945 as an organizational unit within the Head Authorities of Museums and Monument Preservation active within the structure of the Ministry of Culture and Art. The Department’s supreme goal was to document and visually commemorate sites connected with the martyrdom of Poles under the German occupation in 1939–45 by founding museums and raising monuments on execution sites throughout the whole country. The establishment of such an institution was a response of the government to the spontaneous social movement whose goal following the tragic war experience was to commemorate all the fallen in armed struggle and the executed in the Nazi death camps. The social initiatives inspired the authorities to coordinate such efforts, to identify the priorities in this respect, and to select various commemoration forms. These tasks, along with many other ones, were to be implemented by the Department of Museums and Monuments of Polish Martyrology. The paper deals with the characteristics of the Department’s activities, its organizational structure, as well as the detailed aims and tasks implemented over the 9 years of its operations: from the establishment in 1945 to its winding up in 1954. All the Department’s activities meant to commemorate martyrology sites can be divided into those related to the organization and establishment of museums on the sites of former camps, prisons, and Gestapo investigating offices (e.g. museums in Auschwitz, Majdanek, at Warsaw’s 25 Szucha Avenue), and those related to raising monuments to the Nazi regime’s victims. Furthermore, forms meant to continue the efforts initiated by the Department since 1954 are described. The paper is to a great degree based on the documentation preserved in the Central Archives of Modern Records, yet constitutes but an introductory outline as well as encouragement to further investigate the Department’s history.
In the last decades of the 20th c. and following 2000, a real 'boom' in founding Jewish museums throughout Europe could be observed. A lot of new institutions were established, and old ones were modernized. All this resulting from the growing urge to overcome silence over the Holocaust, to square up with the past, and to open the debate on the multiethnicity of the history of Europe. This, in turn, was favoured by the occurring phenomena: Europe’s integration, the fall of the Iron Curtain, and the development of democratic civil societies. New Jewish museums established in Europe, though inevitably making a reference to the Shoah, are not Holocaust museums as such, and they do not tell the story of the genocide. Their goal is mainly to restore the memory of the centuries of the Jewish presence in a given country, region, and town: they tell this story as part of the history of the given place, and aim at having it incorporated into the official national history. Moreover, their mission is to show the presence and importance of the Jewish heritage in today’s world, as well as to ask questions related to Jewish identity in contemporary Europe. The civilizational conflicts that arose after the relatively peaceful 1990s, outlined a new framework for the activity of Jewish museums which, interestingly, gradually go beyond the peculiar Jewish experience in order to reach a universal level. With such activities they try to promote pluralism and multicultural experience, shape inclusive attitudes, give voice to minorities, speak out against all the manifestations of discrimination and exclusion. Since these museums deal with such sensitive challenging issues, they have to well master the structure of their message on every level: that of architecture, script, exhibition layout, and accompanying programmes, thanks to which they unquestionably contribute to creating new standards and marking out new trends in today’s museology as well as in museum learning.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.