Jaworzno City Museum

The first hard-coal mine on Polish soil opened in the 1760s in Szczakowa, today a district of Jaworzno. The Jaworzno City Museum tells that story in a building that once belonged to a colliery, and alongside mining it covers a subject the region long spoke about in whispers: a camp where first the Nazis and then the Communists held prisoners for more than a decade.

History: a museum started by local people

The museum was founded in 1972 on the initiative of a citizens' committee, and its first exhibits came from local collieries and private donors, including old mining maps. After two moves it settled in 1986 in a former mine building at ul. Pocztowa 5, where it still operates. Since 1998 it has been an independent municipal institution. It also runs a regional embroidery workshop where local embroiderers recreate Jaworzno variants of the Kraków-style bodice.

What to see

• Mining exhibition – two rooms. The first recreates a mine gallery with timber and steel supports, complete with helmet, safety lamps, pickaxe and saw. The second reconstructs a mine foreman's office with surveying instruments and a dress uniform with a shako; the colour of the feather on the cap showed a miner's rank.
• "Camp of Two Totalitarianisms. Jaworzno 1943–1956" – you enter through a reconstructed camp gate, and the space is fenced with original concrete posts and barbed wire from the Neu-Dachs sub-camp. Exhibits include a striped prisoner uniform from the German period and a prisoner's rosary.
• Judaica – a tallit, kippot, a fragment of a Torah scroll with a yad, Shabbat candlesticks and a Seder plate. They recall that Jews were part of Jaworzno from about 1748 until the Holocaust.
• A parlour from around 1900 – a "Viennese" sideboard, an Art Nouveau tiled stove, a Zeitter & Winkelmann piano and a clock assembled in the workshop of local watchmaker Abraham Silberschatz.
• Ethnographic exhibition – a log-built cottage interior and the festive dress of the Western Cracovians, the local folk group.

Did you know?

In 1943 the Germans set up Neu-Dachs, a sub-camp of Auschwitz, next to the Dachsgrube mine. In 1945 the Communist authorities took over its infrastructure and created a Central Labour Camp; in 1947, during Operation Vistula, several thousand Ukrainians and Lemkos were held here. Later the site became a prison for juveniles, closed only in 1956. Jaworzno received town rights in 1901, which the parlour marks with a portrait of the first head of the municipality, Franciszek Schattanek.

Tripto tip

The museum is open Tuesday to Friday, 9:00–16:00, and on the last Saturday of the month 9:00–13:00; in July and August it is closed at weekends. A standard ticket costs PLN 10, reduced PLN 6, family PLN 15, and the last entry is half an hour before closing. Allow about an hour. The museum is in the centre, a few minutes from the Market Square; afterwards you can head to Gródek Park or to Sosina Reservoir.