Sikorski Insitute

 

Yesterday I paid a brief visit to the Sikorski Museum to see the display before I describe it in an article for Tydzien Polski. The exhibits are extraordinary but the presentation is very out of date, with various items from different centuries and different battles piled in together higgledy piggledy. Also I wonder whether they should not open every Saturday, instead of only one day a week. The volunteer who showed me round was excellent, full of happy anecdotes about various items, and with a good knowledge of the different regiments and their badges and standards. He told me there was a shortage of volunteers, which is why they chose to open only one Saturday in the month plus Wednesday, Thursday and Friday afternoons for a couple of hours. That is a poor service, especialy as they ask you to book in advance. Hardly user friendly to the occasional visiting Polish family or the tourist coming in from the street. I think they should have more paid staff and a more hands-on forms of display. I was impressed with the captioned switches lighting up various vantage points from the maquette 3D display of the mountains around the battle site of Monte Cassino. It looked amateurish but it was instructive. There should be more of the same.

They are having battle currently with their sister organization the Polish Underground Study Centre. Two old institutions trading blows rather than investing in their archives and their museums. But at least they are alive.

In the evening there was supposed to be a meeting of the Federation of Poles in Great Britain on Zoom. But only The President and the Secretary showed up, both just out from hospital with mobility problems. There we were. Just three 70 year olds discussing the conference in Vilnius, the situation in Poland and the UK. The Federation was once a powerhouse of initiative and activity. Now it's just a spent force, with younger trustees not even bothering to attend. The AGM has been put back to January. If no new candidate wants to take over at that time, then I am ready to propose that the organization winds itself up, no matter how much such a representative umbrella organization is needed by the main Polish organizations in the UK. If they don't get their website up and running by this autumn they are finished. What a sad end to an organization that has spoken for Poles in this country since 1947.