Wokół niemieckiego dziedzictwa kulturowego na Ziemiach Zachodnich i Północnych

"Interest in the German past of the Western and Northern Territories and in the Poles' attitude to the German cultural legacy has been growing for the last few years. It has not been confined to a narrow a elite... It has assumed much broader social dimensions. This is best proved by the favourable reactions to the permanent and periodic exhibitions presenting German history and German culture in the Western and Northern Territories. Permanent exhibitions portraying the history of a town or region have been, or are being, opened in many museums, and what is noteworthy is that the museums have discarded to an archeological section showing the old Slav layer and after a big chronological gap, a section presenting post-World War II history. The German (historical) cultural layer has at last made an appearance, and the presentation of the period of the Polish People's Republic has naturally been changed... Germans and Poles are faced with new task which make it necessary to discard the encumbrances of the bad past. The Germans should maintain their eastern traditions just as the Poles should maintain the traditions of their eastern borderlands. It would be too bad if the two sides ignored the inconvenient aspect of the past. " (fragment of the introduction).