The Kresy Siberia Virtual Museum, in collaboration with the Association of Siberian Deportees, the History Meeting House,the Katyń Museum is holding the "Generations Remember 2016" conference in Warsaw, on September 17-19, 2016. The registration deadline is September 9, 2016, and the program is reprinted below. The event is partly supported by the Office For War Veterans and Victims of Oppression of the Republic of Poland.
SATURDAY 17 September 2016 – National Day of Siberian deportees, Katyń Museum
09:30 – 10:30 Field Mass and ecumenical prayers: with military re-enactment, Katyń Museum, Warsaw Citadel
10:45 – 11:45 Concert: Police and Polish Army Bands, Katyń Museum
12:00 – 13:30 Katyń Museum tour
13:30 – 15:30 Free time: lunch on own arrangements to meet and mingle with other conference participants
15:30 – 16:30 Generations Remember March: Meet at Monte Cassino Monument, skwer Żołnierzy Tułaczy
17:00 – 18:30 Memorial ceremony: Monument to the Murdered and Perished in the East
18:30 – Free time: dinner on own arrangements to meet and mingle with other conference participants
SUNDAY 18 September 2016 – Group Activities Day
09:00 – 10:15 Sybirak Memorial Mass: Holy Cross Church (Św. Krzyża), Krakowskie Przedmieście 3
10:15 – 10:30 Bus to Imperia reception hall, Nowy Świat 6/12
10:30 – 11:00 Break (coffee/tea and refreshments)
11:00 – 11:30 Conference opening and welcome:
– Stefan Wiśniowski, President, Kresy-Siberia Foundation
– Mieczysław Pogodziński, National Executive, Association of Siberian Deportees
11:30 – 13:00 Workshops: Developing Poland-Diaspora collaborative initiatives to preserve
and promote the World War Two history of Kresy-Siberia and Exile
13:00 – 14:30 Conference Opening Reception Lunch: hosted by Office for War Veterans and Victims of Oppression
Senator Anna Maria Anders in London, at a Monument to WWII Victims
Keynote Address: Senator Anna Maria Anders, Secretary of State, Plenipotentiary of the Prime
Minister for International Dialogue, Chair of the General Władysław Anders Foundation
14:30 – 16:00 Group presentations: Proposed Poland-Diaspora collaborative initiatives next steps
16:00 – 16:30 Break (coffee/tea and refreshments)
17:00 – 18:00 Concert: Polish Choral Group from Ukraine, Dom Aktora, al. Ujazdowskie 45
18:30 – Free time: on own arrangements to meet and mingle with other conference participants
MONDAY 19 September 2016 – Speakers and Presentations
09:00 – 09:25 Welcome: Piotr Jakubowski, Director, History Meeting House, ul. Karowa 20
Program overview: Anita Cwynar, Conference Coordinator (Canada)
09:25 – 10:00 Talk: “1936 deportations to Kazakhstan” – Dima Panto, film-maker (Kazakhstan)
10:00 – 10:35 Talk: “The Deportations and Second-Generation Art” – Adrian Palka, Coventry University (UK)
10:35 – 11:00 Break (coffee/tea and refreshments)
11:00 – 12:30 Talk: “Expulsion from Kresy, 1946” – Tomasz Kuba Kozłowski, Director, Warsaw Kresy Initiative
12:30 – 13:30 Lunch: served in the History Meeting House
13:30 – 14:15 Talk: “In Exile, 1939 to 1947” – Władysław Czapski, Sybirak (Poland)
14:15 – 14:45 Talk: “State Police of the 2nd Polish Republic “ – Jacek Walaszczyk, Policeman (Poland)
15:00 – 15:30 Talk: “A Homeland Denied” – Irena Kossakowski-Clarke, author (UK)
15:30 – 16:00 Break (coffee/tea and refreshments)
16:00 – 17:30 Film: “Genocide” – introduced by Arkadiusz Olszewski, director (Poland)
17:30 – 18:00 Talk: “Slicing the Bread” poetry reading – Maja Trochimczyk, author (USA)
18:00 – 18:30 Conference conclusion
19:30 – 22:00 Kresy Feast Dinner (optional, additional cost 100 PLN)
March of the Living - Survivors and Generations in 2015
SPEAKERS
ANNA MARIA ANDERS COSTA is a Polish politician and Polish-American activist, serving since 2016 as Secretary of State, representing the Prime Minister in international dialogue. As a senator, she is a member of the Committee for Emigration Affairs and Contact with Poles Abroad, dealing with care of the Polish diaspora and Poles abroad, migration of Polish citizens,particularly to the European Union, ties between Poland and Poles and people of Polish descent residing abroad and their legal situation, initiating and coordinating cooperation amongst Polish diaspora communities and protecting the heritage of Polish history and culture abroad. Anna Maria is the daughter of General Władysław Anders and Irena Anders. She was educated at the University of Bristol in Britain, where she graduated in Romance Philology, as well as Boston University in the USA, where she earned an MBA in economics. She worked on the UN’s mission in the UNESCO Press Office in Paris as well as for a petroleum company. After the death of her mother she became chief executive of the General Władysław Anders Foundation, dealing with, among other things, the provision of scholarships for students of Polish descent from countries of the former USSR.
WŁADYSŁAW CZAPSKI lives in Wroclaw, where he is a tireless activist working to commemorate the fate of the 20,000 Polish children deported to Siberia during WWII who, after their release and evacuation, were cared for in Iran, Lebanon, Africa, India and Mexico and New Zealand until the end of the war. At his initiative, a committee of survivors installed a plaque in Warsaw expressing gratitude to the Iranian nation for rescuing Poles during the war. He is also an active member of the Circle of Alumni of the Polish Schools of Isfahan-Lebanon. Czapski was born in Drohiczyn Poleski (now Belarus) in January 1938. The Soviets arrested his father in 1940 then deported him with his mother Janina and sister Wanda to Siberia. Once released, they were evacuated to Iran, where his mother died. The children survived the war in Isfahan and in Zouk Mikael, Lebanon. Back in Poland since this time, Władysław continues to express great gratitude for the help given by the Iranians to the Poles at a time when their presence was being erased from the world map. He cherishes his warm memories of the nobility, incredible openness and human kindness on the part of Iran and wherever he is, gives testimony of the history in which he participated.
IRENA KOSSAKOWSKA CLARKE is an artist and author who has written a book due to be released in November 2016, based on the memories and experiences of her father, Wacław Kossakowski. “A Homeland Denied” (ahomelanddenied.com) follows his harrowing journey as a young Warsaw University student whose peaceful life was changed dramatically on the fateful day of September 1, 1939. From imprisonment in the notorious Kozielsk prison to a forced labor camp in the Siberian Arctic Circle, the story tells of suffering and brutality impossible to imagine. Forced to dig runways in temperatures reaching as low as minus 50°C while under constant threat from sadistic guards, he experienced a living hell with death his only companion. He endured and witnessed atrocities, which haunted him for the rest of his life, with so many friends murdered or frozen to death in the unforgiving cruelty of Siberia. But fate intervened and the icy wasteland was replaced by the blistering heat and dry deserts of the Middle East, where the student was taught to fight – and fight he did, in the Italian campaign, at Monte Cassino, Ancona and Bologna. Yet the desire to return to his homeland never left him and only memories of the idyllic life before the war and his intense yearning to return sustained him when he sank to the lowest depths of despair.
TOMASZ KUBA KOZŁOWSKI lives in Warsaw, where he popularizes the Kresy both as an author and as coordinator of the Warsaw Kresy Initiative at the History Meeting House (Dom Spotkań z Historią). For the last eight years he has organised and led the hugely popular series of 1,000 stories “Tales from the Kresy” as well as the “Kresy Cinema”. The Warsaw Kresy Initiative enables the dissemination of the Eastern Land’s history and heritage through a variety of forms. He is also co-author of the book “World of the Borderlands”. Kozłowski is creator and owner of the largest private collection of materials on the Kresy, comprising tens of thousands of objects, including all manner of printed materials, maps, archives, iconography, antiques, everyday objects and souvenirs. This collection forms the basis for exhibitions, albums, and videos used to illustrate his talks. He has also created two major exhibitions, “World of the Borderlands” and “The Great War in the East (1914-1918) from the Baltic to the Carpathians”. Both exhibitions were accompanied by catalogues issued by the History Meeting House. He was awarded the Gloria Artis bronze medal bestowed by Poland’s Minister of Culture and National Heritage.
ARKADIUSZ OLSZEWSKI lives in Pabianice in Central Poland, where he is an illustrator, graphic designer and producer of computer games and animated films. For some time now his primary focus is on works related to Polish history. He is the author of, among others, the animated film "Genocide"[https://youtu.be/DKT_QXAo1m4], which premiered on January 17, 2016 in Pabianice. He is also producing a short animated film about the Accursed Soldiers (Anti-Communist Resistance Movement). His art shows the history of Poland in a very expressive and emotional way, on subjects such as the Warsaw Uprising, the Battle of Khotyn, Battle of Warsaw, Battle of Pabianice (September 7, 1939), the Greater Poland Uprising, the Battle of Polonka and the Warsaw 303 Fighter Squadron. He explains that he is self-taught and only briefly studied graphics. His work is now mainly in the technique known as digital painting - painting on a computer with the aid of a tablet, but is equally unafraid of the pencil, pen or tattoo machine. A gallery of his works can be seen at www.epainfo.pl/maluje-historie.
ADRIAN PAŁKA is a senior lecturer in Media and Performing Arts at Coventry University, with research interests in inter-disciplinary performance and installation as well as the politics, art and culture of Central and Eastern Europe. His recent work focuses on the overlap of sound and image projections in memorial work. This includes the installation “Bark and Butterflies”, which was the product of an artistic research trip to Siberia in 2013 following in the footsteps of an inherited war time diary (www.palkadiaries.com) and “Iron Curtain” a multi-media reminiscence event to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall in 2014 (ironcurtain.coventry.ac.uk). He is currently working on a chapter covering the digital aspect of the Siberia expedition for the forthcoming CDare publication, “Digital Echoes: Spaces for Intangible and Performance Based Cultural Heritage” and a short film about his father’s life for the Leeds City Museum entitled “Exile to Yorkshire”.
DMITRIY PANTO was born in Kokshetau, Kazakhstan, where his Polish great-grandparents were exiled in 1936. He finished his studies at Kokshetau State University in the fields of history, geography and religious studies. He worked as a teacher of history in the German-Kazakh high school Sankt-Lorenc as well as in a high school in Kokshetau. At the same time, he worked as an expert at the Center for Support of Victims of Destructive Religious Movements, Kokshetau. He was a lecturer at the Institute of Qualification Improvement in Kokshetau and an expert for the Committee for Denominational Matters. He worked as an expert at the Institute for Ecclesiastical Studies and an expert at the Institute of National and Religious Policy Analysis in Lutsk, Ukraine. He now has a position in the Professional Science Department at the Museum of World War II in Gdansk. For many years, he has participated in organizations and associations concerned with Siberian deportees. His film "I am a Pole, I Wait" is in production and he will speak about Krasnodolsk, a Polish village in Kazakhstan, to illustrate the problem of Polish identity in Kazakhstan.
MAJA TROCHIMCZYK is a poet, music historian, photographer, and non-profit director born in Poland and living in California (www.trochimczyk.net). She has published six books on music, two volumes of poems and edited two poetry anthologies. She has published hundreds of articles and poems in 7 languages and presented papers at over 70 national and international conferences. She received fellowships and awards from the American Council of Learned Societies, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, several universities, the City and County of Los Angeles, and Poland’s Ministry of Culture. The Sixth Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga (2010-2012) and founder of Moonrise Press, she is also a non-profit director, Communications Director for the Polish American Historical Association, and a member of various editorial boards and poetry groups. Her latest book – “Slicing the Bread, Children’s Survival Manual in 25 Poems” – is a testimonial and monument to untold suffering, witnessed and experienced by non-Jewish Poles during the war, and afterwards under the oppressive “socialist” regime.
JACEK WALASZCZYK is an official at Police Headquarters in Warsaw, a police officer, and a long-time staff member of the Europol European Police Office in The Hague. He is an enthusiast and expert on the history of the Polish State Police and collector of memorabilia related to the history of Polish police formations of the first half of the 20th Century. He is also the creator and administrator of a website dedicated to the history of the pre-war police corps, which serves to consolidate and promote historical knowledge about Polish police formations of that time (www.policjapanstwowa.pl). It aims to disseminate and cultivate community awareness and to preserve the traditions of these formations. Its purpose is to collect and develop a set of documents on the history of the State Police, the Police of the Region of Silesia, as well as other forces involved in the security and protection of public order operating in Polish territories in the period 1914-1945, as well to provide these in digital formats. Its aim is to preserve memories, keep the past alive and perpetuate the relics of our common national heritage.
