“National Golgotha” — book under the patronage of the Sybir Memorial Museum - Muzeum Pamięci Sybiru

12 July 2022

“National Golgotha” — book under the patronage of the Sybir Memorial Museum

„National Golgotha” is a moving collection of a young Pole’s memoirs, who in May 1940, at the age of 15 fell into the hands of the NKVD while trying to illegally cross the Romanian boarder. He tried to get to France, to the Polish army that was being formed. Next 7 years he spend in […]

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„National Golgotha” is a moving collection of a young Pole’s memoirs, who in May 1940, at the age of 15 fell into the hands of the NKVD while trying to illegally cross the Romanian boarder. He tried to get to France, to the Polish army that was being formed. Next 7 years he spend in penal colonies, then in terrible labor camps of slave work. His ordeal was ended up with the successful escape from Vorkuta — something that was commonly thought to be impossible.

The first manuscript of the memoirs was confiscated from the author by the Security Office during his arrest in 1950. After leaving the communist prison, Gajdziński carefully recreated them, hiding subsequent chapters in various hiding places. The work was completed in the second half of the 1980s. However, the work was too extensive for the possibility of printing in underground publishing houses.

The author died shortly after Poland regained its independence and the text was dispersed. Some parts of it were in the hands of his son, the other was in the possession of the collaborators of the underground publishing house “Przedświt”, which had tried to publish the book a few years earlier. After many years, the text was merged and edited.

The second issue of the “National Golgotha” has been enriched with over 200 archival photos and maps illustrating the reality of the world that the author had to face.

The book can be bought in the stationary shop of the Sybir Memorial Museum, open everyday besides Monday in hours: from 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., on Saturday from 1:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

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