Memorabilia, installations and exhibitions occupy 2,900 m² of floor space. They have been arranged in the station, which used to be a transit building until 1979, and in a transit warehouse that’s connected to the main station via a glass tunnel. Wojciech Szczurek, Mayor of Gdynia and one of the initiators of the museum which was officially established in 2012, describes the institution’s mission as helping Polish people and foreign visitors grasp the massive scale of Polish emigration. “We want to commemorate this and build bridges between those who are separated from their homeland for good,” he said during the August ceremony.

Temporary exhibitions will be mounted in smaller rooms. The building will also house a cinema, a café, a restaurant with a view of the sea, and a space for interesting events and happenings. “The permanent exhibition will address the issue of emigration from the early 19th century until modern times. Emigration will be discussed as a social phenomenon because it’s people who are at its centre, the sociological rather than political factor,” Karolina Grabowicz-Matyjas, director of the Emigration Museum in Gdynia, tells Polska.pl.

Exhibitions, lectures and readings about emigration have been held in the Tricity of Gdansk, Sopot and Gdynia since the museum was established. “For two years we have been staging events in urban spaces and municipal institutions. We reckon that after we’ve moved into our new building, some events will continue elsewhere. We are a migrating museum, we like being in touch with people and changing sceneries. Movement is intrinsic to our activity,” explains Karolina Garbowicz-Matyjas.

The Beyond the Borders of Art series has so far featured lectures about the sculptor Alina Szapocznikow, who died in 1973 in France, and Jan Lebstein, a painter and graphic artist who also worked in France and died in 1999. In March 2014, the museum screened a 2007 documentary called Gdansk Railway Station. It tells the story of Polish Jews who fled Poland after the events of 1968, when the communist authorities denounced Jews and their alleged promotion of Zionism, which the government viewed as a threat to the political regime of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL). As a result, many Jews lost their jobs, were discriminated against in different ways, and ultimately had to leave.

In late November 2014, as part of the Meeting with the History of Emigration series, Anne Gurnack (University of Wisconsin-Parkside, USA) talked about emigrants from Kashubia who settled on Jones Island in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Some of the first Polish emigrants in Milwaukee, they found an American equivalent of Kashubian nature on Jones Island, where they could pursue their fishing lifestyle. Today, their descendants cultivate the memory of the Polish island and its Kashubian origins.

“The history of emigration is full of such surprises. We try to bring to light some less familiar stories, and present them in a way younger visitors can relate to. We believe that everyone can find a piece of their family history here, because emigration is part of the history of all Polish people. Everyone has or had relatives who emigrated,” says the director of the Emigration Museum. 

KAROLINA KOWALSKA