Szczecin, 14 July – The opening of the Platform exhibition “European Gulag” took place in The National Museum in Szczecin — The Dialogue Centre Upheavals on 13 July. The exhibition commemorates the history of forced labour camps that were set up in Central and Eastern Europe after the Second World War in countries ruled by communist regimes: East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Moldova. The exhibition will be on display in Szczecin until September 24, 2023, after which it will travel to Pitesti, Romania, and Tirana, Albania.

In his famous novel “The Gulag Archipelago”, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn depicted the vast network of forced labour camps scattered throughout the Soviet Union. A similar system of camps also existed in every country under Communist control after the Second World War. There were some 800 camps and nearly 1,500,000 people were held in them, of whom some 130,000 prisoners lost their lives. The organisation of the camps was reminiscent of the Soviet gulag system in that it included different categories of prisoners, both criminal and political, and also served to suppress opposition, punish political opponents and enforce ideological conformity. In the early stages of these camps, many people were held without a judicial verdict or official decision. Imprisoning people without a fair trial was an example of the injustice and disregard for their fundamental rights that was common in totalitarian systems.

“European Gulag” is an international project created by the Platform of European Memory and Conscience in cooperation with the Committee of National Remembrance in Hungary, the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory, the Lithuanian Genocide and Resistance Research Center, the Institute for the Study of Communist Crimes and their Consequences in Albania, the Institute of National Remembrance in Poland, the Museum of Occupation of Latvia, the Institute of National Remembrance in Slovakia and the Pitești Prison Museum in Romania.

So far, the exhibition has been presented in Budapest (Hungary), Shkodra (Albania), Prague (Czech Republic). Soon it will be on display in Pitesti in Romania, Tirana and in Vojna Memorial in Czechia. In Szczecin, leaflets in Polish have been added to the English-language exhibition, featuring selected texts of the exhibition.

We owe a special thanks to the Polska Fundacja Narodowa for their support in bringing this exhibition to life.

Photo by: The National Museum in Szczecin — The Dialogue Centre Upheavals