The process of declassifying NATO archival documents on the introduction of the Martial Law in Poland began in Autumn 2010 at the initiative of Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski. The first portion of materials was made publically available and handed over to Poland at the ceremony attended by Minister Sikorski on 18 July 2011 at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels. It was then that Minister Sikorski appealed to NATO to continue to declassify the files from other archival collections so that in December—30 years since the introduction of the Martial Law—a conference of historians could be organized along with an exhibition about this tragic event.

To implement Minister Sikorski’s vision, the NATO archival section, in cooperation with the Polish Permanent Representation to NATO and the Foreign Ministry’s Archives and Information Management Bureau, prepared an exhibition along with a scientific conference, to be attended by some of the leading historians from Poland (prof. Andrzej Paczkowski) and the US (Vojtech Mastny of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Mark Kramer of Harvard University).

The exhibition ‘Poland – a Long Journey to Freedom’  will be opened on 13 December 2011 at 12:15 pm at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels. The files will be made publically available on the website of NATO Archives.

www.nato.int/archives/ oraz www.nato.int/archives/PolandMartialLaw/

For more information please contact Col Wojciech Kaliszczak of the Press Office of the Polish Permanent Representation to NATO, phone: +32 2 707 14 55, mobile: +32 492 727 442.

Press Office
Ministry of Foreign Affairs