The project “Unsung Heroes – Local History of Zgorzelec and Görlitz” was performed from April to November 2017.
The project aimed to present the issue of POW camps on the example of Stalag VIIIA Görlitz located in today’s Zgorzelec.
The fate of the prisoners of war and the camp’s location itself had been forgotten, supressed, or disregarded for years. This led to the loss of much information about the otherwise not-so-distant past events. The Memory, Education, Culture Foundation is involved in the dissemination of knowledge that was saved through such undertakings as the “Unsung Heroes” project. By holding events organised at the European Centre in Koźlice, the Foundation seeks to reach out to the inhabitants of the Polish-Saxon border region in order to strengthen the social and cultural identity, a factor deemed crucial to further development of the region.
As part of the project, expert meetings of scientists, witnesses of history and teachers were held, including a seminar titled “What do we know about them? Unsung heroes”. With the information exchanged and memorabilia collected thanks to the project, the existing corpus of knowledge about the nameless heroes – prisoners of war was significantly enriched. The above activities resulted in an international conference “POWs. International community”, which took place in September 2017.
The 20 000,00 euro project was implemented by the Memory, Education, Culture Foundation thanks to funding obtained from the European Regional Development Fund and the state budget under the Small Project Fund INTERREG Poland-Saxony 2014-2022. The project’s partners were: Meetingpoint Music Messiaen e.V., and the Municipality of Zgorzelec.