Every year we meet at the Depot History Centre in Wrocław to discuss our time’s most significant challenges and dilemmas. We invite leading intellectuals and social leaders from Poland and worldwide to take part in this multi-voice discussion.
Beginning again after a major crisis, conflict, war, natural disaster, or pandemic, this is a challenge familiar to societies across the globe. This is the great, universal experience of humanity. At the Forum, we will ask ourselves how to start afresh in post-pandemic Europe and in the face of a crisis of confidence in European integration institutions. We will consider whether the successful historical experiences of international reconciliation, such as the Poles and Germans’ path after the Second World War, can serve as inspiration for the resolution of current and future conflicts in the world. We will look at the post-war history of Wrocław and the Polish Western Territories, seeking historical patterns of how great human communities started over again. On the centenary of the birth of the eminent Polish poet and resident of Wrocław, Tadeusz Różewicz, we will attempt to look at his work as a record of the tragedy of an individual forced to start afresh after the cataclysm of war. Along these lines, we will also consider whether it is possible to start afresh to build the damaged social dialogue in Poland using the ethos of “Solidarity”.
Guests from all over the world will visit us. One of them is prof. Jie-Hyun Lim the University of Seoul, who will share his reflections on post-war memory and commemoration in a global context, taking into account issues such as remembrance of war victims and reconciliation. Among the participants, there will also be young leaders from many European countries associated with the Bolesław Kominek European Youth Forum, sharing the incredible experience of starting over in their own countries. We look forward to meeting Richard Demarco, the eminent art curator, with whom we will follow in the footsteps of Tadeusz Różewicz, Tadeusz Kantor and Józef Szajna to search for a cure for the wounds of humanity in the language.
