“The fundamental issue I must investigate is the matter of the Berlin branch. This is the greatest challenge, the most urgent one,” announced Karol Madaj, the new acting director of the Pilecki Institute, who replaced Prof. Krzysztof Ruchniewicz.
Not long ago, information appeared publicly that Joanna Kliszek would take over as head of the Berlin branch of the Pilecki Institute. In this role, she is to replace Hanna Radziejowska, who was dismissed in a scandalous manner. It then turned out that following this decision, the Polish institution would be managed by a German local councilor.
A few days ago, Minister of Culture Marta Cienkowska announced that Prof. Krzysztof Ruchniewicz had been dismissed from his post as director of the Pilecki Institute. The new head of the Institute will be Karol Madaj, who in the past was connected, among others, with the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN).
The main reason for Ruchniewicz’s dismissal is “failure to fulfill duties in enabling the statutory functioning of the Pilecki Institute through faulty program assumptions, faulty communication policy, and faulty management decisions.”
Is an overhaul coming?
The new acting director of the Pilecki Institute, Karol Madaj, stated at today’s press conference that the issue of the Berlin branch is at this moment a priority that must be clarified.
“We want to continue its (the Pilecki Institute’s – editor’s note) mission, to continue what it was doing, namely reporting on the actions of two totalitarian regimes: German Nazism and Soviet Communism. We want to commemorate the victims of these two systems, conduct thorough academic research, and carry out educational activities” – assured Karol Madaj during a meeting with journalists at the Warsaw headquarters of the Witold Pilecki Institute of Solidarity and Valor.
He added: “I will want to continue the activities that this excellent team has carried out over all these years.”
As he informed, within the Institute there is “a vacancy for the position of director for academic affairs, as Prof. Przemysław Wiszewski has resigned.” “I appoint Dr. habil. Damian Markowski, a Sovietologist, young but already a recognized scholar with many publications and work in numerous institutions, to the post of plenipotentiary for academic affairs (…) He is the one who led substantive research into locating the graves of those who fell in 1939 in Lviv. He will be the right person for this role.”
“The fundamental issue I must investigate is the matter of the Berlin branch. This is the greatest challenge, the most urgent one” – he emphasized – “I know the matter from the media. I have not yet had the time to familiarize myself in detail with all the documents. They have been passed on to me, and this is the issue I will deal with first” – announced the new head of the Pilecki Institute. Asked about the Institute’s branches in New York and Switzerland, Madaj said that “these are further matters high on the list of priorities to investigate. I entered a situation in which all matters are very urgent, all require decisions, interventions.”