An Archive emergency service has been launched to preserve private historical documents for future generations – a special ambulance is sent to people who want to offer or lend their family archives for this program.

The Karta or Charter Centre Foundation, an NGO which documents and popularizes the recent history of Poland and Eastern Europe, has launched an Archive Emergency Service, a program aimed at preserving archive documents in private possession for future generations.

The overriding idea is to prevent archive materials in private possession from destruction, which happens quite often due to ignorance or the owners’ inability to protect them well. An ambulance of the Archive Emergency Service is sure to respond to any signals from Poles who are ready to offer or lend their old family documents, letters and photos to the Karta Centre. Marianna Sadownik, who is involved in the program, says they have responded to over 200 signals so far. The Karta Centre has received many fascinating documents of great historical value, which have been in private hands so far, like photos, letters, memoirs.

Those owners who don’t want to part with what are precious family mementoes for them are encouraged to lend them to the centre, where they will be scanned and then returned. This is exactly from Jacek Zdrojewski from Warsaw has done. He says he wanted his family documents to be available to broader public, rather than be closed in a closet.

The Karta Centre finds particularly valuable historical documents like letters from people who were deported to Siberia or were turned into slave laborers by Nazi Germans – which offer a glimpse of personal life and experience, without which our knowledge of our past would be incomplete.

Click on the audio icon to listen to the report by Krysia Kołosowska.