We would like to invite you to the National Museum in Szczecin - the Dialogue Centre Upheavals on Tuesday, 7 November 2023, at 5.00 pm, to a unique ceremony of awarding commemorative medals to activists of the democratic opposition in West Pomerania.
The medals will be awarded to, among others, people connected with the illegal press published in the region in the 1980s, above all the renowned monthly magazine "Obraz", as well as people involved in the strikes of August '88.
The medals containing the awardees' names are the initiative of Jan Tarnowski, a member of the Academic Chaplaincy, a Szczecin-based pre-August opposition activist, collaborator with the Movement for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights, member of the Regional Board of the NSZZ "Solidarność" Western Pomerania, co-founder of the Katyn Families Association. The oppositionist was interned during the martial law, and after his release from prison in Wierzchów, he was active as a distributor and printer of independent press. Jan Tarnowski is the author of many patriotic graphics recalling key moments in the history of Poland (e.g. the Katyn Massacre, the Warsaw Uprising, the Polish Months), places of religious cult, Polish Madonnas. He made his first prints while still in prison. Further ones, from the second half of the 80s, were distributed as donation certificates, the income of which were allocated to the illegal activity of the "Solidarność".
It was the sale of these unique prints over the past few months that made it possible to raise the amount of money needed to create the design for the medals and to have them minted. The author's intention was that the medals should reach, above all, forgotten activists who have not yet been honoured with any regional or national distinction, people whose names do not appear in history textbooks and without whom the survival of the opposition until Poland gained its sovereignty would have been much more difficult.