»Krzyżowa« Foundation for Mutual Understanding in Europe

Fundacja »Krzyżowa« dla Porozumienia Europejskiego

During World War II, a group of opponents of the National Socialist regime regularly met on the estate of Helmuth James von Moltke in Lower Silesian Kreisau (today: Krzyżowa), a village about 60 kilometres south-west of Breslau (today: Wrocław). They developed a concept for the reconstruction of Germany after the much hoped for collapse of the regime. The group came to be known as the »Kreisauer Kreis« – the Kreisau Circle – after their discovery by the Gestapo, and the group's leading figures were executed. In 1998, an international meeting and seminar centre was established on the estate, which had for many years stood derelict.

History

There was a broad spectrum of resistance movements against the National Socialist regime in Germany, yet at no point was there a large, united resistance. Men and women of all social backgrounds and various political views were active in the resistance, as individuals or in groups, yet they rarely stood in contact with one another.
In January 1940, Helmuth James von Moltke and Peter Yorck von Wartenburg began discussing a new form of government for the post-war period. They were convinced that the National Socialist dictatorship would sooner or later collapse. Both had previously been in touch with opponents of the regime. From 1941 on, the political discussions intensified: about 40 people, friends of Moltke and Yorck, began meeting in various constellations and various places. The participants came from different political and social backgrounds. In May and October 1942, and in the spring of 1943, a total of three big meetings took place in Kreisau under the guise of countryside excursions. The members created several versions of a theoretical concept for a renewal of the German state based on Christian and humanist values.
Though the group was in touch with the resistance within the Wehrmacht, Moltke and others were against putting an end to the National Socialist regime by assassinating Adolf Hitler. The circle collapsed almost entirely after Moltke was arrested by the Gestapo in January 1944 in a matter unrelated to the resistance group. Some members decided to join the military resistance centred around Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. When Stauffenberg's plot to assassinate Hitler and carry out a military coup d'etat failed on July 20, 1944, the Gestapo interrogated all those who had been in on the conspiracy and for the first time learned about the existence of the »Kreisauer Kreis«. Leading members of the circle were arrested and executed.

Kreisau, undated, The »Berghaus«, Fundacja »Krzyżowa« dla Porozumienia Europejskiego

Krzyżowa, 2006, The palace, which houses the exhibition on resistance and opposition in the 20th Century, Stiftung Denkmal

Victims

When the attempt on Adolf Hitler's life failed on July 20, 1944, 200 of the conspirators were executed or driven into suicide, including 8 members of the »Kreisauer Kreis«. They were hanged between August 1944 and February 1945 in Berlin's Plötzensee prison: Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, Hans Bernd von Haeften, Adam von Trott zu Solz, Adolf Reichwein, Julius Leber, Helmuth James von Moltke, Theodor Haubach and Alfred Delp.

The Second World War began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland and the occupation of the west of the country by German troops and the east of the country by the Red Army. Persecution and terror directly followed the invasion in both parts of the country. German units massacred members of the intelligentsia, Jewish and non-Jewish civilians as well as hospital patients. At the end of 1939 the German administration established ghettos where the Jewish population was forced to live in cramped and horrendous conditions. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, eastern Poland also fell under German control. SS Einsatzgruppen started to systematically murder Jewish men, later also women and children. In autumn 1941, local German authorities in the former west of the country began to prepare for the mass murder of Jewish ghetto prisoners using poison gas. By 1945, some three million Polish Jews had been murdered in the extermination camps at Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek or Auschwitz, starved to death in the ghettos or shot dead. In 1943 the Jews living in the Warsaw ghetto staged an uprising, which was brutally crushed by the SS. Polish soldiers fought with the Allies on all fronts during the Second World War. Polish partisan groups, including the patriotic »Armia Krajowa« (Home Army), formed the largest resistance movement in occupied Europe. August 1, 1944 saw the start of the Warsaw Uprising, the most extensive civilian campaign against the Germans in occupied Europe. It failed also because the Red Army, already standing on the opposite side of the Vistula River, chose not to intervene. It is estimated that up to 250,000 people lost their lives in the uprising. A total of around three million non-Jewish Poles met a violent death during the German occupation. Once the Red Army had arrived on (East) Polish soil in January 1944, the troops of the Armia Krajowa were stripped of their weapons by the Soviet secret service and the officers were either shot or deported. The millions of deaths during the occupation, the permanent Soviet annexation of eastern Poland, the incorporation of former eastern German territories and the ensuing population transfers all left a traumatic political and social legacy in Poland. Remembrance of the murder of European Jews in German extermination camps was initially marginalised in the Polish culture of memory. Although Auschwitz soon became an international symbol of the Holocaust, in Poland it was viewed for decades above all as a »site of Polish martyrdom«. However, the start of the 21st century brought about changes in this respect, due in part to the fierce debates over the Jedwabne massacre in eastern Poland. The massacre of around 340 Jews on July 10, 1941 was originally attributed to the »Gestapo and Hitler police« but had in fact been carried out by Polish »neighbours« without orders from the Germans. Debates in Poland and abroad on Polish perpetration resulted in the Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski (*1954) issuing an apology to the victims in 2001. There were increasing calls from experts, such as those from Poland’s Institute for National Remembrance, for the country to confront the most difficult chapters in its history, which also include the anti-Jewish pogroms in 1946-47 and state anti-semitism in communist Poland during the post-war period. The Polish invests extensively in memorial culture, including grand projects with international ambition. The Warsaw Rising Museum was opened already in 2004. The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews was opened in 2013 on the territory of the former Warsaw Ghetto, a new museum dedicated specifically to the Warsaw Ghetto will follow suit in 2024. Since 2017, there is a major Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. Since the turn of the millennium, the sites of the former German extermination camps have also been converted into modern memorial sites. An ever-growing preoccupation with Poland’s Jewish and multicultural heritage can be observed in the field of culture as well.

Remembrance

The Allies decided to shift Poland's borders westwards following the Second World War. Kreisau became part of Poland and was renamed Krzyżowa; the estate was henceforth used for agricultural purposes. No reference was made to the site's history – German, particularly non-communist, resistance did not fit into the historical discourse of the communist regime in Poland.
The idea for establishing a meeting and memorial site in honour of European resistance movements came about at a conference of a Catholic laity association held in Wrocław at the beginning of June, 1989. The conference participants came from Poland, East Germany and West Germany, the Netherlands and the US. That same month, elections were held in Poland, which led to the appointment of the first non-communist head of government, Tadeusz Mazowiecki. On November 12, three days after the fall of the Berlin wall, Mazowiecki welcomed German chancellor Helmut Kohl at the former Kreisau estate for a joint reconciliatory mass. Both governments expressed their support for creating a meeting place, and in July 1990, the »Krzyżowa« Foundation for Mutual Understanding in Europe (Polish: Fundacja »Krzyżowa« dla Porozumienia Europejskiego) was established. Freya von Moltke, Moltke's wife who herself was an active member of the resistance circle, was involved in creating the foundation. In the years that followed, the foundation had the derelict estate renovated. The meeting centre was opened in 1998. Each year, about 5,000 visitors – mostly young people – take part in various events organised at the estate. Most of the events are connected to historical and political education. The memorial site displays a permanent exhibition entitled: »Living in the Truth. From the History of Resistance and Opposition in the 20th Century«.

Berlin, July 1944, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke in front of the »People's Court of Justice«, Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand

Krzyżowa, 2006, Building of the meeting centre, Stiftung Denkmal

Possibilities

Permanent exhibition on the history of resistance and opposition to dictatorships in the 20th century, memorial hall, library, media library, academy, seminars lasting several days, international youth meetings

Contact

http://krzyzowa.org.pl

mdsm@krzyzowa.org.pl

+48 74 85 00 300

Krzyżowa 7
58-112 Krzyżowa

Krzyżowa, undated, The »Berghaus«, which today houses a memorial hall, Fundacja »Krzyżowa« dla Porozumienia Europejskiego

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