"History in an Envelope” is an exhibition presenting private correspondence from the interwar period to the fall of the communist system in Poland. All the letters belong to the collection of the National Museum in Szczecin – the Dialogue Centre Upheavals.
Their content gives the possibility to have a look at key events of that time from the point of view of an individual. They will be told about by ordinary people who included their memories in their letters. They show a lot of various emotions which make history more lively and approachable, as it is not an anonymous narrative written with the intention of teaching, but words of someone's grandfather, mother, father, husband or friend.
The exhibition was inspired by the collection of Zofia Nieniewska's correspondence covering time from the Second World War to the 1980s. Apart from the letters, the exhibition will also present postcards, sound postcards, stamps, graphics, archival photographs and secret messages of prisoners. Letters selected as the most interesting among the NMS-DCU collection will appear on several boards, including a letter from Roman Abraham, the commander of the Bydgoszcz Cavalry Brigade, concerning the health condition of Józef Piłsudski, sent the day before the Marshal's death, and a letter from the owner of the apartment in which Adam Jurczyk, son of the leader of Szczecin's Solidarity '80, spent the last minutes of his life.
The vernissage is to be held on Thursday, July 21st 2022, at 5.00 P.M. in the National Museum in Szczecin – the Dialogue Centre Upheavals. The open-air exhibition will be located at pl. Solidarności, in the passage along ul. Małopolska.
"History in an Envelope” open-air exhibition
July 21st – October 30nd 2022
Szczecin, plac Solidarności
Curators: Adriana Rybicka-Bąk, Paula Sendra
Historical consultation and review: Tomasz Ślepowroński, PhD
Curatorial cooperation: Agnieszka Kuchcińska-Kurcz
Design: Filip Bylak
Edition and proofreading: Wiktoria Klera-Olszak, Bartosz Zasieczny, Yana Bieliak
Organizers: The National Museum in Szczecin – the Dialogue Centre Upheavals, the Western and Northern Territories Network