World War II museum cornerstone laid

Premier Tusk lays the cornerstone. Behind, from left: Museum director Pawel Machcewicz, head of the Prime Minister's office Tomasz Arabski, mayor of Gdansk Pawel Adamowicz and Culture Minister Bogdan Zdrojewski.Photo PAP/ Adam Warzawa

The institution is intended to be a state of the art addition to Poland's museum world, with 230 million zloty (about 54.7 million euro) earmarked for the construction.

“The Museum of the Second World War will not only be a symbol and a remembrance of a tragedy, but also a symbol of hope and a strong Poland, expressed through beautiful architecture,” Tusk said.

The first shots of World War II were fired just north of the Baltic city of Gdansk (then the free city of Danzig), on 1 September 1939, when German warship the Schleswig-Holstein attacked a Polish garrison on the Westerplatte peninsular.

Close to 6 million Polish citizens, including about 3 million Jews, perished during the ensuing war, taking in about 16 percent of the country's pre-war population.

Although the museum board has affirmed that “the war-time history of Poland and the Poles will understandably be the museum’s focus... it is not our intention to create a museum devoted solely to either the Polish nation’s martyrdom or the glory of the Polish armed struggle.”

The institution will offer some 4,000 sq. metres of exhibition space, making it similar in size to the noted Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.

The official opening of the enterprise has been scheduled for 1 September 2014, the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II. (di/nh)