The Swiss want to close down a Polish museum

The Polish museum running for more than 130 years in the Swiss Rapperswil is under threat of closing down. The oldest post of this kind outside the country borders may stop existing, because the local residents want to place their own museum there. Poles from all around the world and the Polish ministry of culture, which promised a half million donation, have stood up for it.

The work of the museum is threatened by the local association “Pro Schloss”. Its authorities for several days have been strongly lobbing by the government of Rapperswil to organize a city museum in Rapperswil's castle, which – raised from ruins by the emigrants from the January Uprising – since more than a century is the abode of the Polish museum. If those plans would be carried out, it would have to find itself another lodgings. “I can't imagine that” - says the manager of the museum, Anna Buchmann. It is her, who started the protest in defence of the post, which is administrated since 1975 by the Polish-Swiss Friendship Society.

A petition prepared by the manager to the government of Rapperswil with a request for saving the museum in the current place has already been signed by two thousand people. Another ten thousand has been gathered by a Pole living in the United States, who opened a website dedicated to saving the museum.