1977 Polish Map of Chambers of National Remembrance (Izby Pamięci Narodowej) in Poland

This is a 1977 Polish map of Poland highlighting Chambers of National Remembrance (Izby Pamięci Narodowej) across the country. These small museums, usually no more than a handful of rooms and sometimes only a single room, commemorate local history and collect artifacts that tell the stories of local citizens and their lives. Many of these are related to the Holocaust, but others deal with much less traumatic subjects.

A Closer Look

The map depicts Poland, identifying cities, towns, lakes, and rivers and illustrating the major road networks. Cities and towns in bold black type have at least one chamber of remembrance or izba pamięci, with numbers in boxes providing details about each one. Different colors indicate locations with a chamber of remembrance, and the number in the box indicates the number of chambers. These include primary schools (red), secondary schools (green), workplaces (purple), social institutions and organizations (gray), and cultural and educational institutions (blue). Black icons mark museums with exhibits concerning national memory.

Chambers of National Remembrance

Chambers of National Remembrance (Izby Pamięci Narodowej) began appearing in the 1960s as part of an effort to preserve local history. Teachers or young professionals often organized the chambers and gathered stories and objects that told the specific area's history. Many focused on World War II and the Holocaust. Today, not every izba pamięci concentrates on the horrors of World War II and the Soviet era, but many do. Government programs help support these local museums, but there isn't enough funding for every proposed project. Many of the izby pamięci are in repurposed historical buildings, allowing communities to display the collected artifacts in important historical locations.

Publication History and Census

This map was edited by Urszula Cichowska and Sylwia Mikulska, prepared from material from the Ministry of Education and Upbringing, and published by the Council for the Protection of Monuments to Struggle and Martyrdom in February 1977. We note three examples cataloged in OCLC, which are part of the collections at the Library of Congress, Utrecht University, and the National Library of Poland, Biblioteka Narodowa.