| Od Redakcji. Krąży po Sydney elegancka, na kredowym papierze drukowana ulotka Zarządu Klubu Polskiego w Ashfield, w której zawarty jest apel do rodaków-darczyńców o donacje na rzecz eleganckiego wyposażenia przyszłego, nowego Klubu Polskiego. Na ulotce widzimy kilka kategorii darczyńców i obiecywane sposoby uhonorowania ich. Diamentowy Darczyńca za swe hojne $10,000.00 będzie uhonorowany specjalnie na miarę skrojoną marynarką klubową, będzie uroczyście oprowadzonym po nowym Klubie jeszcze przed jego otwarciem, a podczas uroczystego otwarcia będzie jako VIP usadzony w pierwszym rzędzie.Na co pójdą zebrane pieniądze? Generalnie na wyposażenie Klubu, w tym na 450 luksusowych krzeseł do audytorium, na maszyny expressowe do kawy, na światła, na widłak do przewozu towarów itp itd oraz uwaga! - $15,000.oo will comprehensively restore army museum items.
Miło słyszeć, że się odnalazły zbiory niegdysiejszego Muzeum Wojska Polskiego, założonego przez śp. Mieczysława Danisa, którym przez lata opiekowali się ludzie z SPK. Poniżej zamieszczamy wspomnienia Felixa Molskiego, który wraz z ekipą entuzjastów zajmował się restoracją eksponatów, ich katalogowaniem i skanowaniem dokumentów. Pracami kierowała specjalistka z Muzeum Powstania warszawskiego, Joanna Lang. Niesamowity wysiłek, solidna robota, znakomite efekty. Może Zarząd Klubu zechce ich uhonorować haftowanymi kamizelkami, jak na Diamentowych Darczyńców przystało?
Link do art. Haftowana kamizelka dla darczyńcy
Cenny zabytek z roku 1807, autograf księcia Józefa Poniatowskiego |
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Yes, almost all of about 4000 items were professionally packaged by Joanna Lang, 2 separate times, several years apart, each over a period of a little under 2 weeks.
The items were located in the storage room in the car park beneath the club. If you ever parked there the door to the storage room was next to the parking spot for the club officials. Mietek Swat had the keys to the storage room because he was at the time President of SPK. SPK and another Polish organisation, from what I can remember Lech Gade was involved with this other group, were joint custodians of the exhibits.
After Swat retired Stan Żak became the President, but by then the keys were changed and only the Club management had keys. The club management did not give access to anyone from SPK or from the other group on the basis that the club owned the storage facility.
When I was working on it with Joanna, items were brought in groups to Dom Polski and then returned to the storage room.
When I volunteered to help SPK with the Anzac exhibition at the club, Gade noted that about 50 posters sent from Poland were stored inside together with the Army Museum exhibits. The poster had never been exhibited. [Mr X] brought me there to see if there was anything we could use. It was almost impossible to see because tons of material had been dumped in the storage facility and you could hardly move around, you had to squeeze yourself around the dumped furniture and items, and climb over smaller stuff on the ground. Terrible. We found some of the posters and used a few for the Anzac Exhibition.
A few years later Joanna emailed me if I was aware that there was an army museum at the Ashfield club. I said yes. She asked if I could take photos of what was there to assess whether it was worth getting copies for the Warsaw Rising Museum. I agreed to do this. However to get photos would have been impossible the way it was. So I organised to take [Mr X] to the club around 7am, he went somewhere and I spent the day moving most of the cupboards and pieces of furniture out into the empty spaces of the underground car park, then moving it back in where I could move around a little better. I did this alone by ‘walking the heavy furniture’ out into the car park. I spent the next few days organising the shelving better, including building some new shelving so that the items could be stored in an organised fashion. I spent the next few days photographing the exhibits. I still have these photos.
After sending them to Joanna she determined that there were exhibits important for the Warsaw Rising Museum to have copies. On this basis she organised a grant from the Rising Museum and the Polish government to come to Australia to ‘restore’ the exhibits. She went through what she believed was most important, brought them to the Dom Polski and I spent from around 7:30 am to 6 pm with almost no breaks, scanning the materials at high resolution using my Epson Expression 1680 professional scanner.
I saved the Warsaw Rising Museum because they were going to rent a professional scanner but I told them of the scanner I had and they said it was of a good enough standard to do the work. Boring and tedious work listening to the scanner go bzzzzz bzzzzz bzzzzzz for endless hours as it slowly scanned each document. I still have these scanned images. There was not enough time to do everything. Joanna returned to Poland and then a few years later she asked us to send a letter to the Warsaw Rising Museum in Poland for Joanna to come a second time, to scan and photograph the exhibits not previously scanned and to professionally store the document in acid free pouches that SPK bought from the Warsaw Rising Museum.
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In Joanna’s second visit the exhibits that could not be scanned because of their size and shape had to be photographed with professional lighting. I again saved the Rising Museum money to hire a professional photographer, because I asked an ex-student of mine, Derek Janderko if he was willing to volunteer to do the photography free of charge. Derek was a photography enthusiast and he had the professional lighting. Derek agreed. He was amazing in that he was working in the evenings. So he would come to the club in the mornings and afternoon, do the photographing, and around 4pm drive off to work. On the last day with still several items that needed to be photographed, he came to do this even though he was terribly sick. Unbelievable effort!!!!!!!!!! On the second visit Anna Zamecznik helped Joanna to some extent with packaging the exhibits in the acid free pouches. I again brought my scanner to Dom Polski and I finished scanning all the items that had not been previously scanned on Joanna’s first visit. I have copies of Derek’s photos and the scanned images.
I could not believe the later events at the club where the tyrants running it, who had ABSOLUTELY NO INTEREST IN THE EXHIBITS when the storage room was no more than a dump, now took an interest in the Museum exhibitis that did not belong to the club, then stopped all access to the storage room where SPK and the other group could no longer enter. (...) Very sad.
Felix Molski 
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