Communist-era 'quiet cabins' exhibition opens in Bydgoszcz museum
PR dla Zagranicy
Peter Gentle
20.05.2014 10:26
Sound proof, perspex cabins used by Poland's communist-era diplomats in the Polish embassy in Cologne to keep out eavesdroppers have been installed in a museum in Bydgoszcz, central Poland.
Radosław Sikorski (right with former finance minister Jacek Rostowski at museum on Monday: photo - PAP/Tytus Żmijewski
The so-called 'quiet cabins' were donated to the Museum of Diplomacy and Polish Refugees by Poland's Foreign Ministry and the official opening of the new, strange, exhibition was attended by Foreign Minister Radek Ssikorski and former finance minister Jan Rostowski on Monday.
The cabins were used by Poland's communist diplomats in democratic West Germany when talks on sensitive issues were being conducted.
“Diplomats feared that they were being overheard by hostile, bourgeois professionals from NATO. So the most important discussions were carried out in the quiet cabins,” Minister Sikorski told journalists.
“To eliminate the possibility of eavesdropping, the cabins could only be entered without shoes and jacket,” Radek Sikorski said, adding he was pleased the cabins had been donated to the museum in Bydgoszcz, the Polish foreign minister's home town. (pg)
source: gazeta.pl