In 2021 thanks to a grant we have received from the German EVZ Foundation the Nomina Foundation and its partners will carry out a research&education project called „Wartime Nowy Sącz”.

The EVZ Foundation – Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft (Rememberance, Responsibility and Future) – is a German federal organization created in 2000 to financially compensate the former forced laborers of the Third Reich and those affected by other injustices from the National Socialist period. With time part of the foundartion’s capital was allocated to financial support of projects aimed to critically examine history, work for human rights and commit to the victims of National Socialism.

In the last autumn we have submitted an appication in the grant programme organized byt eh Foundation under the name local.history. Our idea to create a historical map of Nowy Sącz from the II world war period as a case study of a city under German occupation gained such approval of the programme organizers, that it was chosen in the elimination process (from amon 224 applications from 30 various countries) to be one of the projects granted funds. (The full list of the organizations and projects chosen for funding can be found at the Foundation’s website:LINK)

The main objective of our project is to create a website dedicated to the history of Nowy Sącz during the German occupation, which will include an interactive map of the city and important points in the region, where forced labor camps were located during the war. Our map will include a vast base of data and knowledge about the Ntimes of the german occupation, and a s a whole it will comprise a deepened case study of a city and its inhabitants under the occupation. The map will include papers, articles, videos, podcasts, witness testimonies, archive photographs from the II world war period, contemporary photographs of the described locations and more. In our map we want to gather both materials already known to the researchers of the history of Nowy Sącz but scattered along archives all over the world, and also those we will discover for the first time in the course of the project.
Currently, in the initial phase of our project we would like to ask for your help in searching for materials and sources that are not widely available or were never published before – for example from private collections or family archives. We call upon you to support our project; your help can make our map an even more detailed and accurate record of Nowy Sącz’s history of the occupation period.

All of the materials gathered on the website will be analyzed by specialists – historians and researchers, in a form both approachable for a wider audience and at the same time making for a valuable contribution into the development of academic historical knowledge. We will also take effort to make the gathered materials and the map itself easily accessible to people with various impairments.

The research coordinator of the project, supervising the creation of content for the map is Agnieszka Filipek – historian, archivist; graduate of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. An employee of the National Archives in Krakow, Nowy Sącz Branch, holding the position of senior archivist. Participant of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure programme. Board Member of the Euros – Wind from the East Foundation in Tarnów and of Polish-Austrian Association, Nowy Sącz Branch. Author and co-author of educational projects, and of scientific and popular papers from the field of archive and history education. Her research interests include: archival education, Jewish history and culture, history of the Sącz region, biographistics and genealogy.

Our map will also be available on mobile devices, which will allow its users to walk one of the 9 special educational paths and physically visit the most important points on the map of Nowy Sącz; 6 ready lesson scenarios prepared based on the map will turn it into a valuable tool for school teachers and students.

Our project will be carried out in cooperation with numerous partners from Nowy Sącz – i.a. With National Archives in Kraków, Nowy Sącz Branch, Regional Museum in Nowy Sącz, Voivodeship Pedagogical Library in Nowy Sącz, and Dariuszem Popielą with Popiela Family „Centrum” Foundation.