Baraniak. 145 Interrogations on Rakowiecka Street

The exhibition is devoted to Archbishop Antoni Baraniak. He was tortured in the Mokotow prison, held in a dark cell and in punishment cells, deprived of sleep and starved. As a bishop and secretary to Primate Stefan Wyszynski he was subjected to inhuman interrogations aimed at extracting testimony that the head of the Polish Church had spied for the Vatican.

On 30 October 1955, in Komancza, Primate Stefan Wyszynski wrote of his secretary’s imprisonment in his “Prison Notes”: “It was known at Mokotow that Bishop Baraniak was bearing up bravely and conducting himself with dignity before his interrogators. It was known that the bishop was ‘under investigation’, that the investigation was long and very gruelling, and that the bishop incriminated no one.”

The exhibition is set in the corridor of Pavilion XI. It shows the archbishop’s personal belongings, photographs he took and his liturgical vestments. One of its central pieces is a large oak wardrobe concealing an altar at which the archbishop said mass after his release from prison, when he was under house arrest and the authorities had forbidden him to celebrate. The hidden altar was built for him by his fellow Salesians. The exhibition was created in co-operation with the archbishop’s family; admission is free.