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31.07.2017

The new Polish Ambassador in Lithuania visited the IPN

Urszula Doroszewska, the newly appointed Polish Ambassador in Lithuania, met with the President of the IPN, Dr Jarosław Szarek at the Institute's headquarters. Dr Pawel Libera, Deputy Director of the Historical Research Office and Agnieszka Jędrzak, Head of the Division of International Relations, also attended the talks.

Jarosław Szarek presented one of the effects of the work of the Polish-Lithuanian working group under the auspices of the IPN, namely a bilingual publication entitled "Soviet apparatus of repression against the Lithuanian and Polish underground 1944-1945", containing 76 NKGB-NKVD documents concerning the fight against the Polish and Lithuanian underground, which was translated from Russian into Lithuanian and Polish.

Dr Szarek presented the activities of the educational division of the Institute of National Remembrance in the context of an agreement signed with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, aimed at popularising and disseminating reliable knowledge about Poland's recent history abroad. He stressed that owing to the cooperation of the Institute of National Remembrance and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, two IPN publications – a textbook for learning about Poland’s latest history "From Independence to Independence" and the educational board game "Polak Mały" were included in the materials prepared for over two thousand Polish schoolchildren in Lithuania.

The representatives of the IPN further discussed the search of the burial sites of soldiers of the underground independence movement buried in Lithuania in 1944-1945, among them in Ejszyszki, where the remains of the legendary commander, Home Army lieutenant Jan Borysewicz alias "Krysia" were buried. He was killed in an NKVD ambush on January 21,1945 in Kowalki near Dubicz.

Efforts have also been made to start cooperation with The Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania on the identification of soldiers of the Vilnius Home Army and the Polish anti-Soviet underground in Vilnius, murdered and buried in the Tuskulėnai Manor in Vilnius. The President of the Institute mentioned cooperation with Lithuanian academic communities and a conference which is to be organised by the IPN and the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Jaroslaw Szarek encouraged Urszula Doroszewska to pass on information about the IPN "Archives of Full Remembrance" portal, thanks to which the Institute hopes to collect archival materials not only in Poland but also abroad.

Moreover, the participants of the meeting reflected on the concert at the Lithuanian National Philharmonic Hall in Vilnius with a contribution of the choir of the Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic 
Orchestra as well as the Kaunas Symphony Orchestra,commemorating the victims of the Ponary massacre in 1941-44. During the concert on January 25, 2017, the Ponary Oratory was performed, 
accompanied by film illustrations: documentary photographs and contemporary photographs of the place of execution. 
While visiting the IPN, our guest also met with representatives of the Association of Veterans of the Polish Army in America (SWAP).

Urszula Doroszewska - sociologist, opposition activist in the People's Republic of Poland, she cooperated with the  Workers' Defence Committee and the Committee for Social Self-defence KOR, a member of the Student Solidarity Committee in Warsaw, published in underground magazines, worked as an expert in the Chancellery of the President Lech Kaczyński and as Deputy Director of the Office of Foreign Affairs in the Chancellery of President Andrzej Duda. She was the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland in Georgia and in 2015 the Director of the Polish Institute in Minsk, Belarus. Commemorated with the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restitua (2006) and The Presidential Order of Excellence (Georgia 2013).

 


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