SOS for the Past!
Świat Programów informed Kulisy that it has created a virtual gallery devoted to memory, family mementoes, which are also valuable for others. His idea has already met with a significant response and the gallery on its website can be proud of its considerable achievements. They speak to the leader from everywhere and lend interesting materials from their family collections, collections, albums and other souvenirs. Recently, the Adamicz family reported in person a memory of the bombing of Warsaw’s Śródmieście during the Uprising. They were burning and the tenement houses in Marszałkowska, Hoża and Wilcza streets were turned into rubble. Feathers, books, paper flew. Until now, Mr. Adamowicz kept such a half-burnt book and gave this testimony to the city’s tragedy to the Memorial Gallery. Someone else shared three postcards issued in 1935 on the occasion of the death of Marshal Piłsudski. People still keep material traces of the past time like relics. Once a friend gave me a yellowed, cardboard photograph: he is standing with his father in front of the entrance to the Staniewski circus. Another one has a fragment of the former horse racing area in Pole Mokotowskie captured in the photograph. The lodges, ladies and gentlemen in elegant costumes, watch the race through the lorgnette. You can see the jockey leaning on the horse’s back. I remember a few years ago visiting a small leather goods workshop in Mokotów. The owner, an old craftsman, had a glass case with decorations from the September campaign and the uprising. Below it, in decorative frames, photographs of young boys with visas slung over their chests, standing by the barricade in the Old Town. In the near future, Pan Tadeusz wants to introduce a separate section to his gallery: Varsaviana. It is worthwhile for his initiative to develop and enrich. In many Warsaw houses there are still souvenirs that should be disseminated and shown to others. This is the last time to save the remaining traces of our past from oblivion. And let the oldest ones, whose stories from the old days are not listened to by their grandchildren, should write down their memories, the most important episodes of their past experiences and pass them on to the readers of the pages of the Memory Gallery. Here is her e-mail: dho@dho.com.pl
* – The content of the article was sent for inclusion in the GA.PA Virtual Gallery in 2003. by the author Marek Nowakowski.
