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07.11.2007

“Traces of Crimes” – Poland-wide Project


Does the memory about places, where communist crimes were committed, have to expire? Does the memory have to remain only on books pages? Do we have to accept the historical reason of the torturers? Should the young people retrieve and know these places? What will be the role of the Institute of National Remembrance? These where the questions that participants of the press conference „Traces of Crimes” tried to answer. Starting the conference the president of the Institute of National Remembrance said, that this is a project of recovering memory, in which the crimes committed by communists will be retrieved and identified. - Institute of National Remembrance wants this project to be socially popular – said the president of IPN. Senator Jaroslaw Gowin said, that he was pleased by the fact that the truth about history could be recovered thanks to this kind of conferences and the institution like IPN. – It is one of the most important institutions emerged in free Poland, which guards the memory of Poles, the memory about what was dark in our history, and what was heroic. IPN performs the function of institution, which builds the national pride – said Gowin. Minister Tomasz Merta emphasized that activity of the Institute adopts new forms, what is very important in education. – It does not base on a scheme, in which scholar speaks and students listen. It is an invitation to common search for history, reflections about past, gathering relations, then the history turns into something, what concerns us directly, and we must speak about it in modern way – said Merta. In further part of the conference, the project coordinator Tomasz Łobuszewski from IPN branch in Warsaw presented detailed aims of the project „Traces of Crimes”. Presenting examples of chosen prisons of State Security from different regions of Poland, he was indicating the remains of „traces” of communist crimes, documented by the IPN historians.

The Institute of National Remembrance carries out Poland-wide project „Traces of Crimes”, which purpose is to preserve and reveal to the public the knowledge about „traces of crimes” of communist of repressions from the period 1944-1989, and to document all that have not been destroyed so far by common indifference. The program aims at preparing photo and film documentation of objects used by secret security („bezpieka”) – residences of office of security (in districts and provinces), prisons, identified places of crimes committed by officers of Office of Public Security, Military Information, Civil Militia, Internal Security Corp, and Volunteer Reserves of the Citizens Militia, agents from security departments, and Peoples' Army of Poland.
We invite all who are interested in preserving and deepening the knowledge about modern history of Poland to participate in „Traces of Crimes” . We address the program to historians, students of humanities, social and cultural activists, academics from universities, members of veteran and communities associations, representatives of local governments – responsible for cultural and educational matters and media. We hope, that because of the importance of the program topic it will meet with kind acceptance. Exploration includes at first phase almost 500 objects of former residences of district and province offices of security, prisons, camps and NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) residences.
 
More at www.slady.ipn.gov.pl (in Polish)


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