Exhibit of the month - a Polish flag from Lviv

At the end of September 1939, the Red Army began occupying Lviv, which was within the Polish borders before the war. The city and its surroundings were included in the Ukrainian republic of the Soviet Union. The new authorities required the inhabitants to decorate the streets with Soviet pennants but, because there were so few, it was ordered to tear Polish flags and hang only the red part.

The members of the Gruszkowski family who lived in Lviv, in order to avoid the destruction of their flag, hid it in the home coal store, where it remained safe for the entire war. When the Gruszkowskis left the territories in the east taken from Poland after the war, they took the flag with them to Gdańsk, where they finally settled. As a memento of the described events, for years they resolved not to remove the coal stains from the flag.