80th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising | Press Conference

Piotr Gliński, the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, opened the conference by saying that the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising “has once and for all become the symbol of the Polish Jews’ resistance against the Holocaust”. He also underlined that it was the first urban uprising in the occupied Europe.

Institutions organizing the celebrations were present at the conference. Representatives of the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, Jewish Historical Institute, POLIN Museum of the History of the Polish Jews and The Social and Cultural Association of Polish Jews presented selected events from the rich program of celebrations they had prepared.

The Warsaw Ghetto Museum Albert Stankowski talked about one of the Museum’s key initiatives, the concert of the Polish-Israeli Symphonic Orchestra which will take place on April 19 in Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera. The orchestra will be conducted by Anna Sułkowska-Migoń, a highly appreciated conductor and a numerous Polish and international awards winner. The rank and importance of the event is underscored by the fact that it has the patronage of the Polish President Andrzej Duda.

The MGW director  also mentioned the „Memory 1943” exhibition organized by WGM. The exhibition opening is planned for May 30 in the Warsaw Kordegarda Gallery.

The exhibition will feature the objects found during the excavation works conducted by WGM around Anielewicz’s Bunker in 2022, and the Stroop Report which was handed to the Museum as a deposit by the National Memory Institute. Showing the contrast between these two narrations – the document written by perpetrators, which had functioned in the historical consciousness for dozens of years, and objects that bear witness to the tragedy of the Warsaw Ghetto prisoners – is the main goal of the exhibition. Rusty, broken, partially burned and moisture-damaged after dozens of years underground, these objects show both their fragility and power, becoming a testimony of those who hid, fought and died.

The Director of the Jewish Historical Institute Monika Krawczyk presented the exhibition „Monuments of Resistance. Art towards the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 1943-1946”. She also mentioned the Memory March commemorating the liquidation action („Grossaktion”) in the Warsaw Ghetto.

In his turn, the POLIN Museum director Zygmunt Stępiński underlined that the main topic of this year’s celebrations will be „non-indifference” which is especially important while the brutal war is still present over Poland’s eastern border.