The Polish Cultural Institute was recently established as a diplomatic mission of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland to the United States. The New York-based Institute is dedicated to promoting and nurturing cultural ties between the United States and Poland, both through American exposure to Poland’s cultural achievements, and through exposure of Polish scholars and artists to American trends, institutions, and professional counterparts. The Institute is taking an active collaborative role in the organization, promotion, and in many cases the actual production of a broad range of cultural events in theater, music, film, literature, and the fine arts. With its extensive contacts in America and in Poland the Institute is in an excellent position to help such initiatives in a variety of ways that include fund-raising, facilitating contacts in Poland, organizing concurrent panels of artists and scholars, generating press coverage, and developing public outreach.

Among cultural events organized by the Polish Cultural Institute in its first season, some should be mentioned in particular.

Tribute to Józef Wittlin

On the 25^th Anniversary of renowned poet`s death friends, critics and scholar will gather at the New York Public Library to commemorate his work and legacy.The meeting will be accompanied by an exhibit of Józef Wittlin`s books.

In October CUNY TV, New York cable station with remarkable intellectual ambitions will broadcast I.B. Singer Landscape with Warsaw, a seven-episode documentary on early years of Nobel Prize Laureate. Series commissioned by Polish public television has been written, directed and produced by Adam Kinaszewski, one of the most influential Polish filmmakers.

Scream the Truth at the World – Emanuel Ringelblum and the Hidden Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, November7, 2001 - February18,2002(Museum of Jewish Heritage)

The Ringelblum archive, as the materials came to be known, is the most important source for, and the most poignant testimony to, the destruction of Warsaw Jewry. Approximately fifty items from the archive, including one of the metal containers in which the material was buried, are on loan from The Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw.

Beyond commemorating one very painful day, the event will serve as a reminder that the crackdown, in part by shattering any lingering illusions in Eastern Europe as to Communism’s humanitarian considerations, marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet Bloc. Conditional upon his availability, Zbigniew Brzezinski has expressed an interest in providing the panel discussion with an introductory overview of US policy vis-ŕ-vis Eastern Europe in general and Poland in particular during the martial law period.

The Museum of Television and Radio has agreed to co-sponsor and host the event: a panel discussion on the role of the independent media in Poland when they had to be taken underground during the state of war. It will also be a reminiscence on the experience of “conspiracy” (in the peculiarly Polish sense of the term konspiracja) by some remarkable individuals who had to go into hiding in order to help sustain a resistance movement within Polish society. In a crackdown characterized primarily by the elimination of all forms of communication, resistance primarily took the form of underground media. Our event will include the showing of two short television documentaries, both of them shot, edited, and circulated underground during martial law.