Permanent exhibition of the Museum of the Polish Post Office

Permanent exhibition at the Museum of the Polish Post in Gdańsk, presenting the history of its defence on the first day of World War II, the history of Poles in the Free City of Gdańsk and the reality of pre-war postal workers.

The largest room of the museum focuses on the defence of the Polish Postal and Telegraph Office Gdańsk 1. Memories of witnesses to the defence are presented here. German preparations for the attack are depicted in a copy of a document dated 3 July 1939 drawn up by Polizeiobermeister Erich Goertz, whose plan called for 150 policemen to occupy the Polish Post Office building, 24 more policemen to guard the neighbouring streets, and an additional six to secure the building once it was occupied. The museum houses a replica of a German 7.5 cm Le.IG 18 field gun (two such cannons shelled the building on 1 September). On display are objects exhumed during the exhumation of the bodies of postal workers found in 1991 on the site of the former shooting range at Zaspa in a grave at 20 Jana Pawła II Avenue (buried in 1992 at Zaspa Cemetery), such as medallions, eyeglasses, a gold ring and fragments of uniforms, as well as a button with an eagle on which a bullet mark is visible.

The so-called postmaster's room shows the appearance of a typical workplace of an official of the Post Office in Gdańsk. It features a desk and office utensils from the inter-war years, a spittoon, photographs taken in 1928 on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Post Office and Telegraphs, and a painting that Konrad Guderski received during the voyage of the "Batory". Visitors can also see old telecommunications equipment such as the teletypewriter, telegraph and Hughes telegraph, as well as postage stamps (with the imprint or inscription Port of Gdansk) and letters stamped by the offices of the Polish Post Office in Gdansk. Also on display are documents relating to the presidents of the Polish Post and Telegraph Office in Gdańsk: Dr Kazimierz Lenartowicz and Józef Zakrzewski.

The Gdansk Polonia Room presents testimonies of the activities of Poles living in the Free City of Gdansk, not only in Gdansk, but also in Sopot and smaller towns. On display are, among others, the banner of the Catholic Men's Youth Association, caps and certificates of Polish schools. There are documents of Polish organisations such as the Polish Municipality, the Union of Poles, the Gdansk School Society, the Polish Labour Association and the Polish Gymnastic Society "Sokol". Among the exhibits is also a company plate from the Continental Hotel, where Polish officers from the WST Westerplatte crew were interned in 1939, and an antique telephone, through which you can listen to the story of the pensioner Franz Poguttke, the hero of the columns published in the newspaper "Danziger Neueste Nachrichten".

The Postal Corridor shows manifestations of the memory of the defenders of the Polish Post, including musical and literary works. These include. The Tin Drum, a novel by Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass published in 1959. Popular science books on the subject are also presented, including Poland's Post Office in Danzig: the story of a certain German judicial murder written by Dieter Schenk and concerning the judicial crime of the death sentence passed on postal workers, carried out on 5 October 1939. Presented here is information on the decorations received by the defenders of the Polish Post Office in Gdansk, as well as the Gold Book of the Union of Postal, Telegraph and Telephone Workers of the Republic of Poland, District Circle Gdansk, 1921-1928, 1939-1945. On a fragment of the ceiling from the Tornwald House, located in Gdansk at 7 Nowe Ogrody Street, the signatures of Franciszek Ling and Władysław Deik, later defender of Westerplatte.