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03.03.2021

The Ambassador of Luxembourg visits the IPN's Archive - 3 March 2021

On 3 March, Jan Baster, Deputy President of the Institute of National Remembrance met with the Ambassador of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg to Poland, His Excellency Paul Schmit. Deputy Director of the Archive, Mariusz Kwaśniak, showed the guests around the Archive.

 

On 3 March, Jan Baster, Deputy President of the Institute of National Remembrance met with the Ambassador of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg to Poland, His Excellency Paul Schmit. Deputy Director of the Archive, Mariusz Kwaśniak, showed the guests around the Archive.

The purpose of the visit was to familiarize the Ambassador with the activities of the archival division of the Institute of National Remembrance, which, according to the late Janusz Kurtyka, is the heart of the Institute. The Ambassador enquired about the archival resources, in particular the rules regulating access to the files, and the restricted collection. He was also interested in the issue of digitization of resources and its degree of advancement. The entire resource collected at the IPN headquarters and local units throughout Poland has amounted to over 90 km, including 40 million unique photographs.

Ambassador Schmit visited the conservation workshop, where, among other things, he had the opportunity to see the original of Jurgen Stroop's Report on the liquidation of the Jewish Quarter in Warsaw. The head of the workshop  noted that out of the three copies of the report, the copy owned by the Institute of National Remembrance is distinguished by its original binding and unique photos. In 2017, the document was entered on the UNESCO Cultural Heritage list.

 

 

 

Moreover, the employees of the Archives presented a copy of  the Warsaw Pact map titled "Plan of the Western Front offensive operation " and told the guest about the activities of the Center of Information on the Victims of World War II. They also showed the Ambassador original documents from the resources of the Institute of National Remembrance, including those concerning the fate of Luxembourg citizens during World War II.

At the end of the visit, the Ambassador saw the collection donated by the Polish Falcons in America. These are not only valuable documents and yearbooks of “Dziennik Związkowy”.  the oldest Polish newspaper in the USA, , but also, for example, the uniforms of volunteers - representatives of the Polish community in the USA, who fought in great numbers for a free Poland during the First World War and in the following years. On the basis of the collection, an exhibition is planned to present this little-known fragment of the history of Poland and Poles to a wider audience.

Director Kwaśniak emphasized that thanks to very good archival cooperation (recently, among others with Ukraine, from where the Institute of National Remembrance managed to obtain a lot of valuable materials on the fate of Poles in the East) and the "Archive Full of Remembrance" project addressed mainly to owners of family memorabilia, it is possible to save many interesting, and sometimes invaluable, documents and artifacts.


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