“The Reconstruction Council, consisting of 11 members, chaired by the General Conservator of Monuments, and composed of persons distinguished by their knowledge and experience in investment processes, architecture, urban planning, history or the protection and care of monuments, will in a sense be the voice of society, a dialogue of various communities,” said Deputy Minister of Culture and National Heritage, General Conservator of Monuments Dr Jarosław Sellin during the ceremony of the appointment of the Saxon Palace Reconstruction Council, held at the Royal Castle in Warsaw.

As Deputy Minister Sellin stressed, the Council’s main task “is to remember and to pass on this memory through the reconstruction of the Saxon Palace, the Brühl Palace and the townhouses on Królewska Street in Warsaw to our children, to future generations”.

Jarosław Sellin recalled that 83 years ago the Germans began a conscious and brutal process of destroying the Polish Nation, its culture and identity. On 18 December 1944, as part of an operation of planned demolition and burning of Warsaw, already after the fall of the Warsaw Uprising, the Germans blew up the Brühl Palace and, in the following days, the Saxon Palace.

In his speech, the deputy head of the Ministry of Culture said that the building of the Saxon Palace housed the Cipher Bureau, where Bolshevik codes were deciphered during the 1920 war, and on 8 December 1932 Polish cryptologists managed to decode ciphertexts encrypted with Enigma for the first time. The Saxon Palace building is also associated with Marshal Józef Piłsudski, who had his office here in 1922-1923 as Chief of the General Staff. It was also the seat of the Polish Army Staff with the Brühl Palace hosting the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Saxon Palace Reconstruction Council will oversee the progress of the investment. Candidates for the Council were put forward by the President of the Republic of Poland, the President of the Council of Ministers, the Speaker of the Sejm, the Speaker of the Senate, the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, the Minister of National Defence, the Mayor of the City of Warsaw, the General Conservator of Monuments and the Warsaw City Council.

Adrian Andrzejewski