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"Katyn - It has been an unusual morning" exhibition in Tbilisi: 6-30 November 2018



The Georgian National Museum in cooperation with the Katyn Museum, the division of the Polish Army Museum in Warsaw, and the Polish Institute in Tbilisi,  present the exhibition "Katyn - It has been an unusual morning" at the Simon Janashia Museum of Georgia, Soviet Occupation Exhibition Hall. 

The exhibition is dedicated to the Katyń Massacre - to the fate of the victims of Soviet occupation during the Second World War. The Katyń Massacre - the murder of about 22,000 Polish prisoners-of-war (POWs) in the spring of 1940, and the prisoners captured after 17 September 1939. The telling of the Katyń Massacre is not limited to the time of the tragic events, but extends to their implications and actions after 1940: reprisals against the prisoners' families, deportations, persecutions, destructive propaganda and decades of silence from the international community regarding Soviet atrocities. 

Interviews with the victims' children invite visitors to view this history through their eyes and make a more personal journey into the past. Together with the video material and historical information, the exhibition also presents artifacts - the victims' personal effects found during the excavation of the mass graves.

The aim of the exhibition is to show the essence of Katyń. The exhibition's dual track, educational and emotional, offers the audience an opportunity to get to know the historic events as well as the lives of individuals. 

While visitors can choose the path in which they wish to engage, the shared narrative will allow them to fully understand the Katyń Massacre and its significance to the Polish nation. 

The title of the exhibition "Katyn - It has been an unusual morning" comes from the last extract in the diary of Major Adam Solski on 9 April 1940: “Five in the morning. From first light, it has been an unusual morning. We left in a prison van with small cells (dreadful!). Taken to a forest somewhere, a sort of summer resort. Here a detailed search. Watch was taken from me, it was showing 6:30. I was asked about my wedding band, which … They took roubles, belt, pen knife. What will become of us? …”

The exhibition is supported by the Polish National Foundation.  



















MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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