The museum announced on June 25 that it was changing its main exhibition to bring it back in line with its original concept following changes made in 2017 by the previous government, led by the nationalist-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party. The party was accused of using a public facility to further its own political agenda.

Shortly after the museum opened, PiS took issue with the exhibition for being insufficiently Polish and changed the institution’s director. The new head introduced figures revered by Poles, including a Catholic priest who gave up his life for another inmate at Auschwitz, and a family executed for sheltering Jews. Such was the outcry over the removal of Father Maksymilian Kolbe and the Ulma family that a deputy prime minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, sided with the opposition PiS in the feud. The changes prompted several dozen people to protest in Warsaw and the coastal city of Gdańsk on Friday.

On Saturday, the museum announced on its website that it had been created to “unite Poles, Europeans and the inhabitants of all continents” by showing the “tragic and complex history of Poland during the Second World War—against the backdrop of the history of the entire globe.”

“It is moving not only for us, Poles, but also for foreign guests,” the statement continued.

The announcement went on to explain the decision to remove the exhibits by saying the original concept was “woven from hundreds of human fates and stories of a battle against evil,” most of which were obscure or entirely unknown. The intention had been to present the fates of the war’s millions of victims by emphasizing the “tragedy, brutality and death” meted out to them.

The statement highlighted that the original concept included many well-known Polish figures, including Captain Witold Pilecki, one of the heroes reports said had been removed.

The museum’s management said it understood that “the changes introduced might arouse citizens’ surprise and concern.”

“We have decided that Fr Maksymilian Kolbe and the Ulma family will be included in the permanent exhibition,” the management wrote. “We see that there exists such an authentic social need.”

The statement also said the reinstated national heroes would be presented in a “dignified and fair way, in line with the latest research,” without the “inaccuracies and errors” found in the exhibits they had removed.