2015 a record year for Warsaw Rising Museum

The month of August, with a wide range of events marking the anniversary of the outbreak of the rising on 1 August 1944, was the record month, with over 100, 000 visitors.

A major new project launched by the museum last year is a collection of memorabilia documenting the post-war plight of Warsaw insurgents.

Among the gifts received for the collection are a ring made in 1947 by political prisoners with the use of horsehair and fragments of a toothbrush and a gorget made from a piece of bread in a communist prison.

A special exhibition mounted in May 2015, to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two, had 140, 000 viewers via the Google Cultural Institute during the opening weekend.

With five million visitors since 2004, the Warsaw Rising Museum is among Poland’s most popular sites.

Fought in a bid to secure Poland’s post-war independence, the Warsaw Rising was led by the Home Army – serving under Poland’s government-in-exile in London – which secretly deployed around 50, 000 fighters. Around 18, 000 of them died in the sixty three day-long battle. Some 180, 000 civilians were massacred, or killed by crossfire or bombing, as the Germans took Warsaw back street by street. (mk/nh)