Education Poland Project #34365

Kresy-Siberia "Keep Their Memory Alive"

by Fundacja Kresy-Syberia

Project Report | Sep 15, 2021
Official Reopening of Kresy Siberia Virtual Museum

By Anna Pacewicz | Chair of the Kresy-Siberia Foundation

The new home page

Kresy-Siberia was started on 17 September 2001 by Stefan Wisniowski, the Australia-based, Polish-Canadian son of a Siberian deportee. It started as as an internet discussion forum concerned with research, remembrance, and recognition of the Polish Citizens of all faiths and ethnicities that were persecuted by the Soviet Union during the Second World War.

By 2008, our collection of websites began to reach capacity and a decision was made to create the Kresy-Siberia Foundation, headquartered in Warsaw. The Kresy-Siberia Virtual Museum was officially opened in the Senate of the Republic of Poland on 17 September 2009, on the 70th Anniversary of the Soviet invasion.

The Kresy-Siberia Virtual Museum serves not only to preserve the group’s member collections, but also includes the collections and scholarly works of many individual historians, active research institutes and archives around the world. It provides an accessible window into this poorly known history and a base from which educational programs are being developed.

As you know we have been working extremely hard for over a year now on a full up-grade to our virtual museum to improve online visitor interactions and bring the computer programming up-to-date to ensure the preservation of the platform into the future. One of the last tasks was working on the site translations.

That work is now completed and - on the 20th Anniversary of the creation of Kresy-Siberia - we are thrilled to unveil the newly re-built virtual museum at www.kresy-siberia.org in time for the commemorations on the 17 September 2021.

We welcome you to the new and improved platform and we invite you to visit. For existing users we would really appreciate your feedback - please take the time to review your family testimonies, photographs, biographies and documents. Please send any comments to admin@kresy-siberia.org

A special thanks to our wonderful Shelley Upton for her tireless work and dedication, to Artur Golicz in Poland who looks after the server and to Irena Lowe in New Zealand for her own tireless work in testing the new site.

We need and welcome your support and your contributions, your time, your talents, and your financial support in order to maintain this work that has become our passion – to honour the Polish citizens who so heroically struggled for freedom and for life itself in the eastern Borderlands and in exile outside their beloved Poland during the Second World War.

The new Galleries

The new Wall of Tribute landing page

The new Wall of Tribute biography page

The new Hall of Images

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Attachments:

Kresy-Siberia Testimonies (PDF)

6 Attachments

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May 12, 2021
It takes a village to keep their memory alive

By Anna Pacewicz | Chair of the Kresy-Siberia Foundation

The new Kresy-Siberia Virtual Museum landing page

It was a very challenging to the start of the year. As many of you will know, our Founder & President Stefan Wisniowski suffered a serious stroke on the 16th January. Having spent several weeks in hospital he is now home and beginning the long road to recovery. The stroke has left him with aphasia of speech - and whilst he is still very much across all aspects of the Foundation he has been unable to be as hands on.

A call to arms went out and our “Kresy” family of volunteers have stepped up to help. Welcome to new Facebook admins Stanley Urban, Kris Nietubyc and Shelley Upton who have welcomed 47 new members since the beginning of February. And our continued thanks to stalwarts Alexa Topolski and Chris Wroblewski.

And a special shout-out to our dear “Timcio” Tim Bucknall who continues to build the Kresy-Siberia Twitter account with over 10,000 followers.

Behind the scenes we are super excited to tell you that the three main areas of the virtual museum re-build - https://new.kresy-siberia.org/ - are 99% complete! Please have a visit and check out the Wall of Tribute, the Hall of Images and the Hall of Testimonies. All the data has been transferred and our I.T. guru Shelley Upton is now tidying things up and optimising data performance.

The last stage of the museum re-build will be finalising the complex linking of people, stories and images in the three main sections to the Museum Galleries.

Thank you to Shelley for your painstaking preservation of the museum and also to Irena Lowe for administering the back-end, that is approving new users, answering queries and testing new pages.

Irena has also been busy coordinating the Polish Festival in Wellington, New Zealand with a display for Kresy-Siberia including exhibits from the Poland to Pahiatua 70th Anniversary. She suggests “maybe we can encourage other members to also front our Kresy-Siberia museum at various Polish functions around the world”. If this is something that you are interested in please let us know! We can help with exhibits, presentations and display material.

Finally, thank you for your generous support of the Kresy-Siberia Virtual Museum www.Kresy-Siberia.org and its mission to research, remember and recognize Poland's citizens fighting for survival and freedom in eastern Poland’s “Kresy” and in forced exile during World War II.

Polish Festival in Wellington, New Zealand

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Jan 13, 2021
Remaining connected in difficult times

By Stefan Wisniowski | Kresy-Siberia Foundation President

Generations Remember conference and reunion (2019)

Dear Kresy-Siberia supporter

It has been a difficult year for most of us, especially with the losses and restrictions that the COVID pandemic has brought on. In times like this, we have many reasons to be grateful for belonging to a supportive world-wide online community like Kresy-Siberia.

We have a shared history of family struggle and perseverance. What our families experienced in wartime Europe fighting for survival and freedom can give us hope, strength and the larger perspective to soldier on.
We are part of a community of members that looks out for and helps each other. This has been a core value that has served us well ever since we first started the group 20 years ago.
We can take advantage of some of the time we may have to spend in isolation to work on our family histories with the support of other group members and online resources like our new expanded Virtual Museum at new.kresy-siberia.org and the Family Research Guide available to our members in our Discussion Group.
We can continue learning from each other, even when we can't meet in person. As well as sharing information in our online Discussion Group on Facebook, we can visit our Virtual Museum to preserve and promote our family histories by adding information, photos and historical documents of the Fighters, the Survivors and the Victims.

Please take a moment to support the Kresy-Siberia Virtual Museum and our ongoing work to research, remembrance and recognition of Poland's citizens fighting for freedom and survival in occupied eastern Poland and in forced exile during World War II.

Thank you in advance for your continued support.

"Pozdrawiam serdecznie"
("Hearfelt blessings")

Stefan Wisniowski

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