The former estate of the von Moltke family in the Silesian town of Krzyżowa near Świdnica is undoubtedly among the most important places of both European and Polish-German collective memory. It is here that German opponents of Hitler’s regime, later referred to as the Kreisau Circle, met during World War II, and where, in November 1989, the first prime minister of free Poland, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, and Helmut Kohl, the then chancellor of Germany undergoing the process of unification and striving for fuller liberation, exchanged the Christian sign of peace and forgiveness at a mass celebrated by Bishop Alfons Nossol. It is also here that you can visit the unique exhibition entitled "Courage and Reconciliation", illustrating the path which the two neighbouring nations have travelled throughout the recent decades since the horrifying tragedy of the Second World War. However, when mentioning this Lower Silesian town, one should not forget about another, older exhibition addressing the vast body of problems related to civic resistance against totalitarianism, about the piece of the Berlin Wall placed in the palace courtyard, or about the international meeting centre for young people and adults, the foundation of which was stimulated by the Reconciliation Mass of 1989. Therefore, as aforementioned, Krzyżowa is a multidimensional meeting place of European reach (even supra-European, if one was to consider e.g. Korean-Japanese meetings), a place of dialogue and of remembrance about the pursuit of freedom, and a symbol of opposition to totalitarian and authoritarian systems.
Marcin Miodek "Krzyżowa – place of remembrance and dialogue about the resistance to totalitarianism"
*The text was published in the volume "(Nie)obecne dziedzictwo. Rozważania o Kręgu z Krzyżowej", edited by T. Skonieczny, Wrocław 2017.