Exhibition 'After the war. The Labor Camp in Łambinowice (1945–1946)' in Central Prisoner of War Museum
In July 1945, in Łambinowice, there was organized a labor camp which functioned until October 1946. It was one of the places of isolation that was set up by the Polish administration in Opole Silesia in connection with the process of verification of the nationality of the Silesian population, displacements of Germans and settlement in this area of immigrants coming from the territory of the Former Eastern Lands of the Second Republic of Poland. The camp was multifunctional, that is it served the role of a displacement, labor, isolation and penal camp.
The exhibition presents the history of the camp and its impact set against the background of the sociopolitical and economic transformation taking place in Poland after 1945. It touches, at the same time, the problem of far-reaching effects of World War 2 to a broader extent. Accordingly, the first of the two parts of the display shows the history of the camp and the consequences that followed. Here, the narration is composed of archival documents, press material and memoirs of witnesses to the events. The other one exposes, in the digital form, the most significant material remnant of the labor camp, that is part of the camp documentation found in 1992. It is accompanied by life stories of some of the detained in the camp and their reminiscences (available on recordings at audio points). The exhibition is available in three languages: Polish, German and English.
Moreover, a restored bunkhouse of Stalag 318/VIII F (344) Lamsdorf houses a fragment of spatial installation devoted to the Soviet POWs. It demonstrates the tragic fate of the group of POWs who were treated the harshest by the German and for whom the Lamsdorf POW camps were a place of extermination.
The building of the Museum in Opole houses one permanent exhibition:
