By Stefan Wisniowski | Foundation President
Dear Kresy-Siberia Virtual Museum donors,
Thank you for your generous ongoing support of Kresy-Siberia. Here is our quarterly report on how your donations are being put to work in running and strengthening the Kresy-Siberia Virtual Museum www.Kresy-Siberia.org and our other efforts to research, remember and recognize Poland's citizens fighting for survival and freedom in eastern Poland’s “Kresy” and in forced exile during World War II.
Virtual Museum rebuild urgently required
We have determined that we can no longer delay a full up-grade to our Virtual Museum website to improve online visitor interactions and bring the computer programming up to date. Though this will require an estimate $40,000 or more in investment, it will improve our security against future hacking and ensure the preservation and ongoing health of the Virtual Museum into the future. Please stand by for further updates as our IT team prepares their estimates of the work and costs required.
World-wide discussion group still growing
Our Kresy-Siberia Group discussion group (now hosted on Facebook continues to grow, reaching 1,366 members in June. This friendly and supportive world-wide online community brings together Survivors, Descendants and others interested in learning and sharing these histories. Please refer your friends and family to join the Kresy-Siberia Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/KresySiberiaGroup.
Student Intern joins us in Warsaw
We are pleased to welcome Katarzyna Podgórska, an Eastern Slavonics student at the University of Warsaw, as an intern for the summer in Warsaw. She will be working primarily on digitising lists of names for the Virtual Museum, including the Polish Navy and the "Iranian Archive 1942-1945" list of birth and baptism registries from 1942-1944, which we described in our last report. Thank you to our member Maciej Czarkowski in Warsaw for agreeing to supervise Kasia’s work.
Polish Airman’s diary translated
As you may recall, in 2015, Tim Bucknall’s tweets attracted an anonymous Swiss donor who agreed to donate £1800 towards the translation of Polish Air Force photographer Sergeant Oswald Krydner’s handwritten wartime diaries. All we had to do was find remaining money required. Thanks to a £500 grant from the Polonia Aid Foundation Trust, we have managed to secure funding to complete this project, and will be creating an online exhibition with the materials as soon as the website is back.
New Survivor Testimonies
Work continues to add to our 800 Survivor Testimony interviews recorded over the past few years. Over the past months we have recorded interviews with Czeszlaw Maryszczak in Cheltenham, Ludwik Kanski in Dorset, Maria Alicja Hartley (Goral) in Birmingham, and Walerian Jaworski in Melksham, Wilts.
If you know of any Surviving Sybiraks, residents of pre-WW2 eastern Poland or WW2 Veterans who can be film interviewed anywhere in the world, please let us know right away at foundation@kresy-siberia.org so that we can arrange to preserve their wartime testimonies while we still can.
2017 Conference planning underway
We are very pleased that an all-volunteer committee has come together to organize our Kresy-Siberia 2017 “Generations Remember” Conference in Warsaw on 15-17 September at the History Meeting House (Dom Spotkan z Historia). Thank you to our members Maciej Czarkowski (coordinator), Marta Czerwieniec, Iwona Krason, Adam Aksnowicz, Grace Nagiecka, Greg Krzeszowski, Dima Panto, Barbara Urbanowicz and our remarkable translator Anastazja Pindor for stepping forward.
The conference will be a great opportunity to meet other members as well as Survivors living in Poland, to hear interesting speakers, and to participate in memorial ceremonies on the September 17 Day of the Sybiraks, anniversary of the 1939 Soviet invasion. Please start making your plans now, and stand by for a detailed program and registration information shortly.
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Thank you again for your generous donations of money, time and materials, which all contribute to the survival and strengthening of Kresy-Siberia’s special mission.
With gratitude and warm regards,
The Kresy-Siberia Foundation team
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