Seeking to document the history and culture of the country’s LGBT+ community, the QueerMuzeum was created on the initiative of Lambda Warszawa, Poland’s oldest LGBT+ association.
“I’m very moved because this is a truly historic moment for Lambda Warszawa,” the NGO’s president, Miłosz Przepiórkowski, told a press conference. “Lambda Warszawa functions primarily as an aid organization, so our activities aren’t visible from the outside, but that’s changing today.”
On the vanguard of Poland’s modern-day queer scene, Lambda Warszawa has long been seen as a unifying force that has played an integral role in protecting and advancing the rights of the country’s LGBT+ community.
However, over the course of their activity, the association has also collected more than 100,000 artifacts. It was this, Przepiórkowski told TVP World, that prompted the organization to establish a museum.
“It is a statement,” added Przepiórkowski. “We are on Marszalkowska Street, right in the heart of Warsaw—this should also be a message to the politicians: ‘look, we are opening the fifth queer museum in the world in a country where the legal situation for queer people is the worst in the whole of the EU’.”
Given their importance to the nation’s queer culture, it is fitting that many of the exhibits reflect the story of Lambda Warszawa itself. Among these, for instance, is a telegram sent at 9 a.m. on February 20, 1990, arranging a meeting at “the restaurant at [Warsaw’s] Central Station” between two queer activists.
This meeting would have historic implications and lead to the eventual registration of Lambda Warszawa.
Redolent of a small white cube art gallery, the museum packs a lot inside its otherwise modest footprint.
“For me this museum is both small and big at the same time, because it represents a milestone in the life of our community,” says the museum’s director, Krzysztof Kliszczyński.
Of Lambda Warszawa’s collection, around 150 items have been placed on display, including a 1932 edition of the Journal of Laws, its yellowed pages turned to a text abolishing the persecution of same-sex relations.
Other exhibits number sepia images of covert meeting spaces and prominent campaigners, as well as leaflets and pamphlets that do much to reveal the traditionally underground nature of queer life in Poland.
“The end of the war brought neither full liberation nor acknowledgment of the suffering,” reads one caption describing the post-WWII situation of gay men and women. “The ‘inconvenient’ Nazi victims couldn’t share their experience.
“In Poland, unlike the USSR, the law did not ban same-sex relations, but the security apparatus kept a watchful eye on gay men.”
This would reach a nadir with Operation Hyacinth in the 1980s. While the last provision penalizing queer life was repealed in 1969, the AIDS epidemic of the 80s saw authorities crackdown on homosexual circles by harassing, surveilling and arresting those involved.
Yet despite this “unprecedented wave of repression,” we are told how LGBT+ society rallied to create the first publications and organizations advocating for gay rights—it is this message of resilience that echoes throughout.
Following a timeline that begins in the 16th century, the museum’s mission is delivered with clarity and pride: “We really wanted to show that this history is long,” says Kliszczyński.
“That means that, to put it simply, we wanted to express an obvious truth: that since there have been people on Polish soil, there have been queer people on Polish soil—different terms were used, but they have always been there.”
