29.09.11Unique emigration album

The photo collection of the Emigration Museum has been enriched with a real collector’s item – an album of photographs presenting the interior of the Emigration Camp buildings constructed in the forests of the Grabówek district. The album was offered by Anna Janikowska from Gdynia. It was found after WWII in a deserted complex of buildings by Antoni Gralak, the donor’s father, and was kept in her home for several decades. The owner of the album decided that the created Emigration Museum will be the best place for depositing the album. The Emigration Camp, called...


29.09.11Competition – PORTRAIT OF AN EMIGRANT

PORTRAIT OF AN EMIGRANT – a competition for emigration stories is an element of the Emigration Museum in Gdynia aimed at creating the history of Polish emigration based on family albums, memoirs and diaries. The stories of emigrants, the recollections of departures, homesickness, home, family, and work. The new world, new people, new habits, and new motherlands. Children, education, a foreign language, us and them... The photos of farewells in the old country. Formal, serious and festive. Each of them is a start of a new history. Family stories about those who left and the ones who...


26.09.11Great interest in the Gdynia’s Monument Day

On Sunday 25 September, more than 500 people joined the educational walks from the Maritime Station within the Gdynia’s Monument Day. In the programme, which started from the Maritime Office, the city’s conservator Robert Hirsz presented the route and the port facilities. The presentation by Anna Orchowska-Smolińska described the history and architecture of the building, while Aleksander Gosk focused on the plans related to the origins of the Emigration Museum. Because of the considerable interest in the monuments included in the Gdynia’s Monument Day, the groups of...


20.09.11Themerson & Themerson & Wiktoria

The Emigration Museum is inviting film lovers to the show of a documentary film entitled ‘Themerson & Themerson’ and a meeting with its author, Wiktoria Szymańska, to be held at the ‘Żyrafa’ Film Club (Culture Shipyard) on 2 October (Sunday), 3 p.m., Gdynia, 1 Waszyngtona Street. ‘Themerson & Themerson’ is a film about love, passion, a creative idea, selfless dedication, and distance to the world. The film explores the fragments of the Themerson’s creation – their films, drawings and books, as well as their correspondence, sites and...


13.08.1188 years ago – ‘Kentucky’ in Gdynia

13 August 1923 is the date featured in all Gdynia’s calendars. The first sea-going ship, the French steamer ‘Kentucky’, called at the port under construction. It is less frequently mentioned that the first cargo exported by Gdynia on board of ‘Kentucky’ were people – emigrants leaving Poland. This is how this episode was described by Jan Żelewski, an officer of the Port Construction Management: ‘They were peasants from the Greater Poland, very large families, with children and infants and relatively numerous men with uprising badges. It was said...


12.08.11Album of Captain Gorski

We mentioned the album of Captain Jan Rajnold Gorski, a deputy master of the Port of Gdynia, in the note of 16 July (‘Maritime Station – farewells/welcomes’). Today, we are presenting several other unique photos, which document events taking place at the Maritime Station that were recorded by the Captain. In the title photo, there is Captain Gorski with a group in regional costumes against the moored ‘Piłsudski’ ship. The two photos show the visit of the President of the Republic, Ignacy Mościcki, to the building of the Maritime Station. The President was on...


05.08.111959 – Farewell to Poland – the Maritime Station – Batory

The Maritime Station in Gdynia, the Batory’s deck – the last contact with Poland. Ms Krystyna Witecka decided to migrate to Canada with her three children in 1959. She has sent us a few photos from her voyage. A Varsovian, intensely patriotic, and a soldier of the Home Army, she had to apply for emigration for several years. Finally, she received the long-waited passport through her family abroad – a pass to the free world. What were the motives of this uneasy decision? Like many her countrymen, she could not accept the new communist orders. Having been...


03.08.11Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski – 87th anniversary of death

On 3rd August, the anniversary of death of Joseph Conrad, a great writer-emigrant, flowers were laid at his monument in Gdynia traditionally. He emigrated, first to France and next to the United Kingdom, when he was 17. He won fame and the position of a prominent writer in the history of world literature. He never broke his ties with Poland, always keeping in touch with the old country. At the end of his life, he even considered coming back from emigration to the revived motherland. Representatives of the City Hall, the Maritime University, maritime social organizations, writers and...


21.07.11Dramatic correspondence from a garbage can

Owing to Mr Przemysław Pragert we became owners of unique correspondence. Maria, living in a village in Hrubieszów District, looked for her husband Jan (born in 1883), first via the Red Cross and next the Polish Office of International Aid for Emigrants, who has not dropped a line since his departure to America. The letters come from 1932 – 1935. Przemysław Pragert found a package of documents in the debris of a building demolished in Sopot. The letters have the dramatic overtones. The family were in a very difficult situation and were looking for the father and husband lost...


21.07.11‘Polish islands in Romanian Bukovina’

This exhibition of photographs is the fruit of an expedition by the Museum of Emigration project team to the Polish centres in Romanian Bukovina. Bukovina – the Carpathian land shared by Ukraine and Romania today – was the destination of Polish emigrants from Lesser Poland and Galicia in the far corners of the Habsburg monarchy, already at the end of the 18th century.   The Czadec highlanders settled down in Bukovina’s villages to look for work in forest clearing and in farms. Salt miners from Bochnia and Wieliczka came to work in salt mines. Natural disasters...


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The Museum of Emigration is a pioneering project of great importance for millions of Poles in Poland and all over the world. The history of Polish emigration, the process so important for our culture and national identity, will gain here the proper recognition it deserves.

Gdynia became the true centre of Polish emigration in the times of the 2nd Republic. The Maritime Station served the passenger traffic for half a century and will regain its splendour owing to the Museum.

The address and location of the future museum were imprinted in the memories of thousands of Polish emigrants and their relatives.

 

Emigration Museum
The Maritime Station
1 Polska Street 
81-339  Gdynia

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