Firearms of the Second Polish Republic and Their Designers

The Museum of Fortifications and Weapons “Arsenał”, the Zamość Museum’s branch at 2 Zamkowa Street, shows the firearms Poland designed and built between the two world wars, together with the engineers behind them. It runs from 4 September 2026 to 14 February 2027. The museum’s words below are translated from its Polish-language announcement; it publishes no English version.

Zamość Museum on the exhibition:

The exhibition is devoted to the history of Polish firearms and their designers. It presents both the best-known designs of the Second Polish Republic and lesser-known projects, prototypes and solutions that never went beyond the design stage or were produced only in small series.

Behind names such as VIS or UR lie not only interesting designs but, above all, the stories of their creators - the engineers and designers who took part in the development of Polish technical thought and the arms industry.

What to expect

This is a technical show with a biographical thread: the weapons any military-history enthusiast will recognise stand next to prototypes and short production runs. A preview published by ezamosc.pl, based on the museum’s own material, lists among the designs on display:

• VIS wz. 35 - the semi-automatic pistol by Piotr Wilniewczyc and Jan Skrzypiński;
• UR wz. 35 - an anti-tank rifle in a small, rifle-sized 7.92 mm calibre;
• wz. 28 and wz. 30 - a light and a heavy machine gun;
• MORS wz. 39 and wz. 38 M - a submachine gun and a semi-automatic rifle from the last years before the war;
• Błyskawica - a submachine gun produced by the underground during the German occupation.

The same preview says the objects come from five collections: the Polish Army Museum in Warsaw, the regional museums in Tomaszów Lubelski and Biłgoraj, the museum in Bondyrz and the Zamość Museum itself. The designers it names include Piotr Wilniewczyc, Jan Skrzypiński, Józef Maroszek, Tadeusz Felsztyn and Jan Werner.

According to the museum, Andrzej Urbański conceived the exhibition and advised on its content, Andrzej Maziarz wrote the script, and Kinga Kołodziejczyk, Sebastian Oliwiak and Paulina Wujec were responsible for its graphic design and visual identity. It opened on 4 September 2026 at 14:00.

Allow 30-45 minutes for the exhibition itself. The Arsenał also has three permanent displays, among them one on the Zamość region in the military conflicts and weapons technology of the 20th century, housed in the Pavilion under the Curtain Wall. Add that and you have a coherent 90-minute visit on 20th-century arms.

Context

Piotr Wilniewczyc and Jan Skrzypiński designed the VIS pistol in 1930; its original name, “WiS”, came from their surnames, and from 1936 it was the standard sidearm of Polish Army officers and NCOs. The wz. 35 anti-tank rifle was developed at the State Rifle Factory in Warsaw by a team led by Józef Maroszek and went into production in 1938. The Błyskawica, designed by Wacław Zawrotny and Seweryn Wielanier, was built in clandestine workshops; Polish Wikipedia notes that occupied Poland was the only occupied country to produce weapons of its own design underground.

Tickets and time

The Zamość Museum’s website does not publish Arsenał prices. The price list on the museum’s site (23 PLN, reduced 15 PLN) covers the main building at 30 Ormiańska Street and the Sculpture Gallery; the Arsenał is not named in it. For details the museum points to the branch’s own site, muzeumarsenal.pl; the simplest check is a call to the Arsenał on +48 882 106 007.

In September 2026 the Arsenał’s free day is Thursday - the museum announces it as free entry to this branch’s permanent displays and sets the free day from time to time. Its page does not say whether the free day covers this temporary show. At the main building temporary exhibitions carry a fixed fee on the free day, so do not assume this one is free.

The museum’s website gives opening hours of 10:00-16:00 (10 AM to 4 PM) every day except Monday, and 10:00-17:00 from May to the end of September, without distinguishing between branches. If you plan to arrive in the last hour, confirm by phone.

Worth it for anyone interested in military history or engineering, for re-enactors, and for students of interwar Poland. If you came to Zamość for its Renaissance architecture and have no interest in weapons, skip it without regret - beyond the designers’ life stories there is little here for you.

English on site: the museum states nothing about English labels, an audio guide or English-language tours for this exhibition, and the guided tours on its visitor page are offered in Polish only. Expect Polish captions; the objects themselves need no translation, the biographies do.

What the press says

Two previews, both based on the museum’s own material, neither judging the display.

ezamosc.pl (1 September 2026, SŁ, submitted material): lists the main designs on show, from the VIS to the Błyskawica, and notes that the story runs on into wartime underground production and the post-war industry - article, in Polish .

Skafander - Portal Akademicki (2 September 2026): presents the show as the story of the people who built Polish weapons design in under two decades, and lists the collections that lent objects - article, in Polish .

See also

• Zamość Museum profile - the main building on the Great Market Square, prices, hours and all branches, the Arsenał included.
• Inscribed in Time - the museum’s centenary exhibition, which includes militaria from its own collection.
• In the Glow of the Uniform - the Arsenał’s second temporary show, from 2 October 2026, on officers’ ball traditions in the same interwar years.
• Janusz Peter Regional Museum in Tomaszów Lubelski - one of the lenders to this show, with a display on the battles of Tomaszów in September 1939.

Museum profile: Zamość Museum .