Image: Press materials
Dubbed the ‘Freedom Express’, it is an initiative of the Berlin-based European Network – Remembrance and Solidarity, an organisation created by the ministers of culture of Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia to document and promote the study of 20th-century history and how it is remembered.
The tour begins in Gdansk, the cradle of the Solidarity movement, on Saturday, from where the group will go, through Warsaw, to Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, to finish in Berlin on 13 September.
Polish writer and journalist Dariusz Rosiak, one of the leaders of the group, told Polish Radio that the idea of ‘Freedom Express’ is to highlight the continuing importance of the events of 1989, a pivotal time for the countres of Central and Eastern Europe.
In Rosiak’s view, people in Poland and other post-communist states continue to have problems in talking about the pre-1989 and post-1989 events, partly because of their limited interest in history.
“Attempts to run away from our history are counterproductive as they deprive us from the fundamental tool of self-assessment and of talking about ourselves,” Rosiak said.
The participants were selected in a competition. They come from ten countries and include four Germans, three Poles, three Czechs, two participants from Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine respectively, and one each from Costa Rica, Moldova, Hungary and Great Britain. They are all graduates of philosophy, journalism, sociology, political science, IT and the arts. The oldest was them was born in 1983, the youngest – in 1994.
The programme of ‘Freedom Express’ includes the opening of the European Solidarity Centre in Gdansk, workshops in democracy in Warsaw, and meetings with the spiritual leader of the Romanian revolution of 1989 Laszlo Tokes and members of the legendary Czech pop group Plastic People of the Universe. (mk/jb)