The Site of National Remembrance in Łambinowice is, as we can see, a multidimensional historical place, which is for sure the source of both great challenges as well as numerous opportunities.
Yes indeed. The starting point for creating a martyrological museum in Łambinowice consisted in drastic violation of human rights by Wehrmacht in Lamsdorf during WW2, aimed at the soldiers of anti-Hitler coalition. However, current tasks of the Museum extend far beyond WW2 and the geographical limits of Lamsdorf/Łambinowice, as they refer to: POW system in both totalitarian regimes during WW2 (including the fate of POWs incarcerated in other German camps in Europe as well as those in NKVD’s captivity); POW system in Lamsdorf in the earlier periods of WW1 and the Prussian-French war, as well as social consequences and traces of wars in Lamsdorf/Łambinowice. I am thinking here about camps for civilians displaced as a result of the borders changing after the war.
Through our activity in these fields, sometimes from a full perspective and sometimes only in connection with a selected aspect, we make attempts for the memorial site in Łambinowice to be perceived as a universal symbol warning against the effects of abandoning the respect for human dignity and autonomy in favour of physical violence and ideological captivity. The history of this place refers to the negation of liberty and equality. The Museum builds its educational and civil message around these values, joining the actions promoting the respect for human rights.
It is not an easy task, in particular when resentments and distinct reluctance towards discovering a new perspective come to the fore. It is very difficult to discuss with emotions constructed upon personal experience or the experience of one’s relatives. However, it seems that we have already done the hardest part. I am referring here to the dispute of two memories – in simplified terms: Polish memory vs. German memory that we experienced on a large scale during the critical decades of the 20th and 21st century. At the time, the Łambinowice site was visited by large groups of those who were not curious of one another, but who were brought to us by this experience, their own or their parents’ or grandparents’. For some of them the year 1945 marked the end of the trauma of WW2, but for the other it was only the beginning… What we did then (and what we still patiently do), respecting individual memory and presenting our scientific findings, turned out to be appropriate. We want to follow this direction. Education raising the awareness of cultural background as well as psychological and social consequences of armed conflicts and evidence-based work should present itself as a good suggestion for the society 75 years after the war.
The museum is already extending its activity (in particular connected with popularization) with polyphonic, highly humanistic message, extending beyond factual, strictly historical framework of a memorial site. This message emphasizes the values universal for European civilizational circle, so negated by the wartime history of Lamsdorf/Łambinowice. At the same time we pay greater attention to the already mentioned social and psychological, micro historical context of the events that we analyse and commemorate. We expect such attitude to help in showing our addressees, to a growing extent deprived of direct family message, how the mechanisms of war and violence modify everyday reality of a human being. It is all a constant warning.
“We take part in shaping a human being responsible for the present and the future” – it is probably one of the most important elements of CMJW’s mission.
The thing that we can learn when we know the past it is responsibility for the present and the future. It is the awareness that accompanies not only us, the employees of CMJW, but generally all staff members in martyrological museums.
Even if a large part of current activities of CMJW refers to the material basis of the functioning of a memorial site, which requires a lot of effort, so in order to physically present relics of the history of POWs, educational activity is of equal importance for us.
Więźniowie pierwszego transportu na dworcu kolejowym w Tarnowie