Muzeum Poczty Polskiej, Gdańsk

Muzeum Poczty Polskiej preserves the story of Poland’s postal service in the Free City of Gdańsk, whose local work ran from nineteen twenty to nineteen thirty-nine. This building was the main workplace of Polish postal employees here, linked to Poland by its own telephone line. On the morning of September the first, nineteen thirty-nine, German police and SS formations attacked the post office at about quarter to five, at the same time as the assault on Westerplatte.

The defenders drove back repeated attacks with gunfire and grenades. Later, artillery fire, explosives, and armoured vehicles battered the building; the defenders withdrew into the cellars, where the attackers pumped in petrol and set it alight. When surrender came that evening, Jan Michoń, carrying a white flag, was shot, and Józef Wąsik was killed by a flamethrower.

Captured postal workers received death sentences, carried out in October. Inside, the museum holds their documents and personal traces, including spectacles, religious medals, a wedding ring, uniform fragments, and an eagle button marked by a bullet strike. These small objects bring the scale of the event down to individual lives.