Did the World Find Out?

This temporary exhibition at the Pod Zegarem Martyrdom Museum, Lublin’s former Gestapo detention centre, is built around a glass jar. It held secret correspondence between Polish prisoners of war and women in Ravensbrück, and lay buried near Neubrandenburg until May 1975. The museum has published neither an opening nor a closing date; it published its description of the show on 3 September 2026, in Polish only.

Pod Zegarem Martyrdom Museum on the exhibition (our translation of the museum’s Polish text):

The exhibition “Did the World Find Out?” refers directly to the events of May 1975, when a glass jar of documents was dug up not far from Neubrandenburg. Its hiding place was pointed out by a former prisoner of war of Stalag II A, Dr Henryk Grabowski. The jar held unique testimonies, poems, reports and letters written by, among others, Zofia Pociłowska and Wanda Wojtasik, as well as a miniature sculpture of an eagle. These priceless materials are the only surviving collection of documents from the clandestine cooperation between Polish prisoners of war and women prisoners of the German concentration camp Ravensbrück.

The exhibition raises fundamental questions about whether today’s young generation knows what happened in the camps, and how to keep that knowledge alive as the last witnesses pass away. The story comes to life in the exhibition room through the original content of the documents, testimonies and mementoes of indomitable Polish women who, at the cost of their own lives, strove to inform the public about the crimes and the pseudo-medical experiments.

What to expect

The museum says the story comes to life “in the exhibition room”, but gives neither the room’s address nor the number of objects. The branch is itself a memorial site: the basement at Uniwersytecka 1 was a Gestapo jail.

The branch’s second space, home to the exhibition “Girls in KL Ravensbrück”, is at Radziszewskiego 4, about 100 m away, a two-minute walk. Regional broadcaster TVP3 Lublin placed this show at Uniwersytecka 1, but the same note also puts the Ravensbrück exhibition “in the Pod Zegarem museum”. If you are coming specifically for this show, ask at the desk which building to head for.

What to look for, based on the museum’s description:

• The miniature eagle from the jar - a tiny carving with patriotic inscriptions, lent by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. It is the only object from the find itself that the museum lists as an original; the letters, reports and poems are shown as a digital archive.
• Zofia Pociłowska - the exhibition’s narrator, presented through her biography, archive photographs, the manuscript of her poem “To Mother” and a miniature cross.
• “Sabotażyki” - small figures that inmates, among them Maria Hiszpańska and Joanna Szydłowska, carved from toothbrush handles and buttons.
• Maria Hiszpańska-Neumann’s striped uniform - her original prison garment from Ravensbrück.
• Uniforms, a side cap, blankets and dog tags from September 1939 - the backdrop for the prisoner-of-war resistance the women worked with.

The whole display is tied together by 11 scenes drawn in comic-book style. The museum says plainly that they are aimed above all at the young.

Context

Ravensbrück, about 90 km north of Berlin, was a German concentration camp for women; between 1939 and 1945 some 48,500 Polish women passed through it. German doctors carried out pseudo-medical operations on 74 of them, and the women smuggled the news out in secret letters to their families, written in urine between the lines of ordinary text. Stalag II A at Fünfeichen, on the edge of Neubrandenburg, was a prisoner-of-war camp that also held Polish soldiers.

Zofia Pociłowska-Kann (1920-2019) was sent to Ravensbrück via Warsaw’s Pawiak prison and the prison at Lublin Castle, where she was sentenced to death. According to the National Museum in Lublin itself, she began sculpting in the camp workshop and became a sculptor after the war.

Wanda Wojtasik, according to Wikipedia, is the maiden name of Wanda Półtawska (1921-2023), one of the women operated on in the camp. Polish Wikipedia states that after her arrest in 1941 she was interrogated and tortured in the Pod Zegarem Gestapo jail itself, whose cells are now the branch’s permanent exhibition.

The documents from the jar were published in 1980 by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum’s press as “Aby świat się dowiedział…” (“So That the World Would Know…”). A German edition followed in 2015 from Metropol Verlag in Berlin. The exhibition’s title turns the book’s title into a question.

Tickets and time

The branch is open Tuesday to Saturday, 9:00-16:00. Those are the hours the branch’s visitor page gave on 1 October 2026; on 23 September it still listed 10:00-17:00. The museum does not say whether these are autumn and winter hours, so check that page before you go (it is in Polish).

The price list has no separate ticket for temporary shows: a standard ticket costs 10 PLN, reduced 8 PLN, and payment is cash only. The branch sets free-admission days month by month and lists them on the same page; in October 2026 they are 6, 14, 22 and 30 October. The museum does not say whether they cover the temporary exhibition.

Allow 30-45 minutes for the exhibition alone, around an hour and a half with the cells. The museum has announced no closing date, so if you are travelling far, call first: +48 81 533 36 78, or email zegar@mnwl.pl .

English on site: the museum has published nothing about this exhibition in English and does not say whether the labels are translated. Assume Polish only unless the desk tells you otherwise.

Who it is for: older schoolchildren and teenagers with a teacher or parent, and adults interested in the history of Polish women in the camps. Skip it with young children. The comic-book scenes do not soften the subject - the exhibition deals with camp crimes and pseudo-medical operations on young women, and the branch’s main site is a former Gestapo jail.

What the press says

No English-language coverage was found. The Polish reporting, in our words:

TVP3 Lublin (27 August 2026, unsigned): a note on free-admission days in Lublin’s museums says the temporary exhibition “Czy świat się dowiedział?” can already be seen at the museum at Uniwersytecka 1 - link .

No review and no report from an opening had been found as of 23 September 2026.

Updates

• 2026-10-01 - opening hours changed: the branch’s page now gives Tuesday to Saturday, 9:00-16:00, instead of 10:00-17:00 (source ). The exhibition is still listed on the branch’s pages, with no closing date.
• 2026-09-23 - the branch’s pages checked: the museum gives no closing date and no room address. The start date used here is the day the museum announced the show (3 September 2026), although TVP3 Lublin mentioned it as early as 27 August.

See also

• Pod Zegarem Martyrdom Museum - the profile, with prices and directions (for current opening hours use the museum’s page linked above); the 12 Gestapo cells with prisoners’ inscriptions are the reason to stay longer than the exhibition itself.
• Voices That Never Fall Silent - eight Majdanek survivors’ stories, on until 30 April 2027; the same approach through biographies and documents, and free to enter.
• KL Lublin 1944. Epilogue - photographs of Majdanek just after liberation; the show is on the grounds of the State Museum at Majdanek, a ten-to-twenty-minute ride by city bus or trolleybus from the centre, so plan it as a separate half-day.
• Museum of Pawiak Prison in Warsaw - Zofia Pociłowska passed through Pawiak before she was taken to Lublin and then Ravensbrück.

Current information is on the National Museum in Lublin’s exhibition page (in Polish).

Museum profile: Pod Zegarem Martyrdom Museum .