“During World War II, approximately 2 million Polish children were murdered by the German and Soviet occupiers. 200,000 were kidnapped for Germanisation and only 20% of them returned to Poland. We should always remember and repeat those figures”, said the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Prof. Piotr Gliński, at the ceremonial opening of the exhibition “We were only children. The Gehenna of Polish Children during and after World War II’, which is presented at the premises of the Sejm in Warsaw.

Prepared by the Museum of Polish Children – Victims of Totalitarianism in connection with the Day of Polish Children of War, which falls on 10 September, the exhibition is devoted to the dramatic fate of Polish children who fell victim to two totalitarian empires – the German Third Reich and the USSR. Many of them were Germanised or murdered.

The exhibition panels show, for example, the arrest of children from the village of Mosina in Wielkopolska or the fate of young prisoners of the camp on Przemyslowa Street in Łódź. The display is also devoted to children displaced from their home villages and towns, abducted for Germanisation, child labourers sent to forced labour in Germany, the youngest participants in the Warsaw Uprising, children deported deep into the USSR, and descendants of the Cursed Soldiers.

“It is good that the exhibition is presented in the Polish Sejm. I think it should also be displayed in the European Parliament and the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. I would like to thank the Museum of Polish Children – victims of totalitarianism, very much for its work and commitment. This work that we are doing together, however, would not be possible without the witnesses of memory i.e. children and victims of the German and Soviet occupants during and after the war,” said Minister Gliński.

Adrian Andrzejewski