The Scout Cross. An Extraordinary History

The Museum of Scouting invites visitors to its premises in Warsaw for an exhibition devoted to the history of the scout cross - the principal badge of the Polish Scouting and Guiding Association (ZHP) - and its tradition of more than a hundred years.

The exhibition room is open on weekdays from 9:00 to 17:00. The museum states that a visit at other hours is possible once a time has been arranged in advance with the museum office.

The project is financed from the state budget, from funds granted by the Minister of Education and Science under the “Science for Society II” programme.

What to expect

This is a panel exhibition, and a detailed one. The museum has published all 22 panels on the exhibition page, running from the 1911 competition for a Polish scout badge to the return of numbered crosses in the Polish Scouting and Guiding Association (ZHP) in 2021. Most panels cover one period and shows successive versions of the cross, with series and serial numbers, next to period documents such as membership cards and appointment certificates. The opening panel says more than 100 designs have been made since the first cross; the show picks the most representative.

Objects worth finding:

• The Teodor Groszkowski cross (series 0, no. 434) - most likely the first version, from 1913-1915, with a fleur-de-lis where later crosses carry a star.
• Jan Rossman’s cross on a scrap of coat - taken by the Germans in a house search in April 1944 and handed back when its owner dared to ask for it. On 1 August 1944 Rossman pinned it on Eugeniusz Stasiecki, deputy head of the underground Gray Ranks (Szare Szeregi) scouts. When Stasiecki was killed in the Warsaw Uprising, fellow soldiers of the “Zośka” Battalion identified his body by this cross.
• The Dachau cross - stamped after the camp’s liberation out of tin cans, using a die cut into the head of a railway track bolt.
• The Edinburgh cross (Kirkwood & Son, 1943) - ordered by the ZHP’s wartime Supreme Committee (Naczelny Komitet na Czas Wojny) in Great Britain.
• The numbered ARTMEDAL cross from Częstochowa - the result of the ZHP’s 2021 decision to bring back serial numbers.

The panel texts are by Marcin Binasiak; the material comes from the Central Archives of Modern Records, the museum’s own holdings and private collections.

Context

In Poland the scout cross is not a merit award: every scout receives it on taking the Scout Promise, and most Polish scouting organisations use it. Its shape borrows from the Virtuti Militari, Poland’s highest military order, and it was designed by a priest, Kazimierz Lutosławski, after a 1911 design competition run by Andrzej Małkowski, the founder of Polish scouting, produced no winner. The first crosses were most probably handed out in September 1913 at the end of an instructors’ course in Warsaw.

Tickets and time

• Opening hours: the exhibition is open Monday to Friday, 9:00-17:00 (the museum’s Contact page). For any other time, including weekends, you have to arrange a visit with the museum office in advance.
• Tickets: neither the exhibition page nor the Contact page states a price; for group visits, call +48 22 33 90 703.
• How long: the panels are text-heavy - allow 30-45 minutes to read them properly.
• Who it is for: scouts and scout leaders, badge collectors, and history teachers looking for a single object that carries a hundred years of Polish history.
• Who can skip it: families with small children, and anyone who does not read Polish - the published panels carry no text in any other language.

See also

• Museum of Scouting - the permanent display in the same YMCA building shows banners, uniforms and crosses with their certificates, so both fit into one visit.
• Warsaw Uprising Museum - picks up the story of the “Zośka” and “Parasol” battalions that the panel on the wartime underground introduces.