Pawel Machewicz, director of the planned Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk has announced that the museum’s aim is to weave individual stories together with historical events.
Machewicz, a Polish historian, made the announcement at an international conference, currently being held in the Baltic seaside city.
“I don’t believe that it is possible to create a uniform European memory,” Professor Machcewicz said, “but we should try to understand one another better through a historical dialogue. The Museum in Gdansk is to serve precisely this purpose.” The museum’s future director stressed that World War II is an event which brings to light widely different historical memories of various nations.
It will be the first museum in Europe to look in-depth at the conflict, focusing on the suffering of the civilian population, forms of resistance to occupation and individual stories of people. Machewicz said that these various threads of narration will supplement each other and will be mutually interwoven.
The conference in Gdansk brought together historians, political scientists and sociologists from Poland, Germany, Russia and Ukraine. (mk/mmj)