On 4 April 2022, a delegation from the Institute of National Remembrance headed by the Deputy President of the IPN, Prof. Karol Polejowski, met with the management of the Czech Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes in Prague - Deputy Director Ondřej Matějka, Ph.D. and the Director of the Security Services Archive, Světlana Ptáčníková. The representatives of the two institutions discussed future archival and research cooperation, including a joint project devoted to the period of political transformation, and the comparison of the process initiated in Poland to events taking place in other countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes was established in 2007 by the Czech government to collect, analyze and share documents from the Nazi and communist periods. In the archives of the Institute one can find, among others, documents concerning and drafted by the former State Security StB.
The Security Service Archive (Archiv niezečnostních složek, ABS) is one of the newest archives in the Czech Republic. It deals with archival materials previously kept in the Archive of the Ministry of the Interior. It houses almost 20 km of files, arranged in approximately 750 units and collections.
The IPN delegation also laid flowers at the monument dedicated to Ryszard Siwiec at the headquarters of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. In 2009, the street where the Czech Institute is located was renamed in honor of a Pole, Ryszard Siwiec, who, in protest against the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, set himself on fire on 8 September 1968, during a nationwide harvest festival at a stadium in Warsaw.
- Those of you who still have a spark of humanity and human feelings inside your hearts, come to your senses! Hear my cry, the cry of an ordinary man, the son of a nation which loves its own and other nations’ freedom above all, even more than his own life, come to your senses! It's not too late! - Siwiec called out.
On 4 April 2022, the Deputy President of the IPN, Prof.Karol Polejowski decorated Antoni Wręga, Chargé d’Affaires of the Polish Embassy in Prague, with the Cross of Freedom and Solidarity. The ceremony took place at the Polish Embassy in Prague.
The Cross of Freedom and Solidarity was established by the Seym on 5 August 2010. It was awarded for the first time in June 2011 on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of social protests in Radom. The cross is awarded by the President of the Republic of Poland, at the request of the President of the IPN, to activists of the opposition to the communist dictatorship, for activities aimed at regaining independence and sovereignty by Poland, and respecting human rights in the former communist People's Republic of Poland. The Cross of Freedom and Solidarity is modeled on the Independence Cross of the Second Polish Republic.
The next day, the IPN delegation visited the Security Service Archive. Representatives of the IPN also visited the Polish Institute in Prague, one of twenty-four Polish Institutes in the world, whose main goal is to spread the knowledge about Polish culture, history and society. They met with the director of the Institute, Maciej Ruczaj, and his deputy, Wojciech Bednarski.
The Institute is part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland, one of the representative offices of the Republic of Poland in the Czech Republic (apart from the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Prague, the Consulate of the Republic of Poland in Prague and the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Ostrava). It is a continuation of the cultural department of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland from the 1920s. After World War II, it operated as the House of Polish Culture at the corner of Wacław Square and Jindřišska Street, and from 1994 as the Polish Institute. Currently, its headquarters are located in the old center of Prague, in the Little Square, in a medieval house, the entrance to which is at 27 Karlova Street.