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Pamięciorzeczy – Conference and Exhibition Opening
Items left behind by the prisoners of concentration and extermination camps are not only museum artifacts and historical sources, but, above all, objects of extraordinary emotional value. Often, they are the only testimony left of a person and their presence in a place of torment.
The conference “Pamięciorzeczy. Reflections on the 85th Anniversary of the Outbreak of World War II” was dedicated to this topic. The event was organized by the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Gdańsk, Arolsen Archives, the Gdańsk Scientific Society, and the Stutthof Museum in Sztutowo.
The conference was preceded by the opening of the #StolenMemory exhibition, prepared by Arolsen Archives, which will be displayed at the University of Gdańsk for the next few weeks. We would like to remind you that in 2022, this extraordinary exhibition, housed in a shipping container and telling the story of restoring memory about people through the lens of found objects, was on display at the Stutthof Museum in Sztutowo in June and July 2022.
The first part of the conference was dedicated to memory in institutional, educational, and popularizing contexts. The discussion, led by Ewa Malinowska, head of the Education Department at the Stutthof Museum in Sztutowo, featured Dr. Tomasz Snarski from the Faculty of Law and Administration at the University of Gdańsk, Piotr Tarnowski, director of the Stutthof Museum in Sztutowo, as well as staff members from our institution: Dr. Danuta Drywa and Dr. Marcin Owsiński. The conversation primarily focused on the role of objects in the daily work at the Memorial Site and their social significance as carriers of memory about people, victims of crimes committed during 1939-1945.
In the second part of the conference, presentations were given by Prof. Maria Mendel and Prof. Michał Harciarek from the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Gdańsk, Prof. Arnold Kłonczyński from the Faculty of History at the University of Gdańsk, and Dr. Tomasz Kranz, director of the State Museum at Majdanek.