Call for Applications

The Krzyżowa Foundation for European Understanding invites you to visit the exceptional temporary exhibition “Awakening – Struggle – Victory. The Return of Silesia to Europe,” which will be presented at our headquarters from October 11 to November 12, 2025.

The exhibition transports visitors to the 1980s—a time that proved to be a breakthrough for Poland and all of Central and Eastern Europe. It was a period of strikes and the nascent Solidarity movement, the introduction of martial law, and simultaneously, society's ever-stronger aspiration for change. The exhibition guides visitors through subsequent stages of this history—from workers' protests in Silesia and Wrocław, through the symbolic meeting of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Krzyżowa in 1989, all the way to the European Union enlargement in 2004, which symbolically "returned" the border regions to the center of a united Europe.

The narrative of the exposition connects political events with social and cultural context, showing how the transformations of this period affected the lives of ordinary people and shaped the contemporary identity of the region.

The exhibition was created on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the Reconciliation Mass in Krzyżowa and was prepared by the HAUS SCHLESIEN Documentation and Information Centre. It is an excellent opportunity to learn more closely about the path Silesia took in the last decades of the 20th century, right in the place marked by the history of reconciliation.

When: from October 11 to November 12

Read more: Temporary Exhibition "Awakening – Struggle – Victory. The Return of Silesia to Europe" in Krzyżowa