We have summarised the informational campaign #80WW2 on the occasion of 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War

Press conference summarising informational campaign #80WW2 with the participation of the director of Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, Karol Nawrocki PhD, and the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Szymon Szynkowski vel Sęk, which commemorated 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, took place on 3 October 2019 in the Western Institute in Poznań. The core of that informational campaign was the exhibition „Fighting and Suffering”.

The exhibition „Fighting and Suffering” presented in several dozen countries was accompanied by the global informational and educational campaign organised together by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Museum of the Second World War. The main goal of the campaign was to spread information about the exhibition on social media through, among others, the hashtag #80WW2.

The exhibition developed by the historians of the Museum of the Second World War for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is being presented in 80 places around the world. This is the first campaign carried out as part of the historical policy on such a large scale.

The exhibition was not only shown in embassies, where a relatively small amount of people could see it, but we also wanted it to be presented in prestigious locations that ensured high levels of attendance – the places where the message could reach a lot of people. Those were the museums, the galleries, the universities, the governmental buildings. Those were the locations which guaranteed access to large opinion-forming circles. Our premise was to support the campaign on social media with the strong message. The global campaign #80WW2 has begun on 23 August 2019, the anniversary of the signing of The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, with the publication of a tweet which included a spot promoting the exhibition „Fighting and Suffering”.

„The results of the campaign speak for themselves: the spot was viewed on Twitter over 40 thousand times, which is one of the best scores in the history of Twitter accuounts of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs together with Polish, English and local languages accounts of Polish Institutes. The videos were shown over 1 million 300 thousand times on the main account of the MFA. We recorded almost 2 million views on the accounts of Polish Institutes.”, said Szymon Szynkowski vel Sęk, the Secretary of State for Polish Community Abroad, European Policy and Public Diplomacy in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during the conference.

Afterwards, Karol Nawrocki PhD, the Director of the Museum of the Second World War, spoke: „In my opinion, the great success of this action was due to the balance between an objective historical truth and diplomatic dialogue between Poland and several dozen countries. That proves the fact that the thuth about Polish history can be spoken and it is heard out around the world. We were conscious of the fact that censorship of 1939 and 1 September 1939 are important symbols – the symbol of the fight referring to the archetype of the Westerplatte and the symbol of the suffering which is reflected in the Bombing of Wieluń. We knew that these two symbols aren't recognised around the world, neither in the East nor in the  West for various reasons.”

The cities in which the exhibition was held in were among others: Algiers, Athens, Belfast, Berlin, Bogotá, Brasília, Bratislava, Brussels, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Bucharest, Canberra, Chengdu, Chicago, Christchurch, Dar es Salaam, Doha, Dublin, Jakarta, Edinburgh, Yerevan, Geneva, The Hague, Huston, Kaliningrad, Kiev, Cologne, Kuala Lumpur, London, Los Angeles, Luanda, Ljubljana, Lviv, Madrid, Manchester, Milan, Messy, Melbourne, Minsk, Montreal, Nicose, New York, Odessa and many more...

Exhibitional Project „Fighting and Suffering”

„Fighting and Suffering” is an international exhibitional project carried out by the Museum of the Second World War in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland. The  intent of the organisers is to present the exhibition in several dozen Polish Institutes abroad on the 6 continents in cities such as Washington, Brasília, Mexico City,  Edinburgh, Vienna, Belgrade, Jakarta, Canberra. The exhibition tells a tale about Polish experience of the Second World War. The tragedy of the war and the endeavours of the Polish soldiers to regain independence of the fatherland areparticularly displayed themes of this exhibition. The aim of the exhibition is the familiarisation with attitudes of Polish citizens towards the overwhelming force of aggressors who later became the occupants.