The merger of the Museum of the Second World War and the Museum of Westerplatte and War of 1939 shifted to 1 February 2017

On 23 September 2016 the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Professor Piotr Gliński, issued a new ordinance shifting the date of the merger of the Museum of the Second World War and the Museum of Westerplatte and War of 1939 to 1 February 2017.

According to the announcement on the website of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, “the decision of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage is to satisfy the postulates and the explicit and public declarations of the management of the Museum of the Second World War that the date of the merger of the institutions had to be postponed in order to facilitate the completion of the construction of the Museum and the organization of its exhibition.”

On 22 September 2016 the Director of the Museum of the Second World War, Professor Machcewicz officially informed the Minister of Culture and National Heritage about the financial losses which would be incurred if the merger took place on 1 December 2016. This would make it necessary to stop the construction and the exhibition production for at least a month in order to take inventory of the assets of the Museum of the Second World War, required under the Act on accounting in the case of liquidation or merger of institutions. Documents from the construction companies and the exhibition producer with the estimated cost of such an inventory were transferred by the Museum Director to the Minister of Culture. Stopping the construction would also result in an inability to spend several dozen millions zlotys allocated to complete the construction works and the exhibition in 2016. These sums would have to be returned to the state budget, which would jeopardise the completion of the construction and the opening of the Museum of the Second World War in 2017.