Exhibits
Since 1982, a number of objects connected to the Norwegian POWs have been collected, in both Norway and Poland. Several special exhibitions to present them were arranged at first, but from 1996 onwards, the Norwegian collection has had a permanent exhibition area in the newly renovated Ostrzeszów museum. The collection of objects continues, and the museum has developed into an information and competence centre concerning Norwegian POWs in general. The museum is engaged in collecting the abundant literature relating to the subject.
What makes the Norwegian POW Museum especially unique is photographic collection of one of the former POWs of the Ostrzeszów camp. After managing to smuggle a small camera into the camp, the prisoner used chocolate and cigarettes from his Red Cross parcels to “buy” film from the German guards. Thus he could document many aspects of POW life in a unique way. Many of his photographs have been enlarged and cover the walls in the museum.
It is rather unusual to find a Norwegian museum far outside the borders of the country. The inhabitants of Schildberg (Ostrzeszów) are proud of being able to display the unique history that they and Norway share. In 2003 more than 6000 persons visited the POW museum; including Polish and Norwegian families and individuals. The museum intends to publish several booklets covering the fate of the POWs. Information will also be published on the internet.
Read more about this topic: Norwegian POW Museum
Famous quotes containing the word exhibits:
“After all the field of battle possesses many advantages over the drawing-room. There at least is no room for pretension or excessive ceremony, no shaking of hands or rubbing of noses, which make one doubt your sincerity, but hearty as well as hard hand-play. It at least exhibits one of the faces of humanity, the former only a mask.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It exhibits the effort of an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“Uncritical semantics is the myth of a museum in which the exhibits are meanings and the words are labels. To switch languages is to change the labels.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)