This is one of the photographs documenting the first exhibition organised at the National Museum in Warsaw after the Second World War.
The Warsaw Accuses exhibition opened on May 3, 1945, five days before the war officially ended, and ran until June. The photograph shows part of the exhibition – the so-called 'destruction room'. We see crates the Germans had prepared to transport works of art out of the country, rolled-up paintings, and empty frames. The same room also contained bayonet-slashed paintings by Boznańska and Malczewski, artefacts recovered from the rubble of other Warsaw museums, and an urn containing the ashes of burned books from the Krasiński Library.
This is how the Polish Film Chronicle described the exhibition on July 31, 1945:
Text
The magnitude and essence of the tragedy endured by Polish culture under German occupation was shown without pathos, through simply arranged exhibits and documents. SS men had invaded the museum. Drunk and dressed up in Polish traditional costumes, they had destroyed furniture and slashed paintings by Pillati and Kossak. This was not just mindless vandalism. The exhibition revealed the true intentions of this enemy who transformed Poland into a deserted wasteland.
Zofia Chomętowska did not simply document the exhibition – her photographs were also an integral part of it. Her pre-war works hung next to Edward Falkowski’s photographs, allowing one to grasp the scale of the wartime destruction. By contrast, her photographs taken at the end of the war documented the ruins of the city, as well as signs of life being reborn there. The exhibition gave Chomętowska the chance to travel throughout Europe, and during one trip she decided to emigrate. In 1947, she moved to Argentina and gave up photography.
Originally written in Polish, translated by AG, edited by MB, Dec 2018