On 17 November 2014 the Memory of Nations Awards ceremony 2014 was held in Prague's National Theatre. The Institute of National Remembrance, a partner of the Memory of Nations Awards, was represented by the President dr Łukasz Kamiński and Deputy Director of the Publish Education Office Anna Piekarska. Kornel Morawiecki awarded the Memory of Nations Award 2014 along with four other Europeans
Twenty individuals from the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia have been nominated this year for the prestigious European award. The five laureates were announced during a live programme broadcast by four European television stations. Kornel Morawiecki, member of Fighting Solidarity; Dana Vargová, a Czech who took care of her paralyzed son – described by the secret police as the "most dangerous anti-communist element in the country"; Manfred Matthies who led inhabitants from the German Democratic Republic to West Berlin through secret channels. Anton Srholc who received holy orders from the Pope, but nevertheless he returned to Bratislava to help believers during the normalisation period and János Kenedi, who organised famous opposition seminars in his flat in Budapest. What connects the five laureates is courage with which they opposed the communist regime.
This year's award was designed by the multimedia artist Richard Wiesner in cooperation with Kryštof Kinterou – an original "talking" USB disc with recorded voices of the laureates. A concert was organised during the ceremony, the artists included John Cale (ex Velvet Underground), the Berlin bank Pankow and the Polish band Raz Dwa Trzy.
Memory of Nations Awards 2014
The prestigious European Memory of Nations Awards have been presented annually since 2010 by the Post Bellum civic association to individuals who personally experienced some of the key moments of the previous century and who "through their actions, have proven that honour, freedom, and dignity are not just empty words." The origin of these awards is associated with the late President Václav Havel, who said, "If we want to know who we are, we must know our past and we have to try to understand the challenges, oppression, and the temptations our ancestors were faced with. For this reason I greatly value the work of the Memory of Nations project." This year the Memory of Nations Awards are being presented under the patronage of Vaclav Havel's brother, the philosopher and scientist Ivan M. Havel.
About Kornel Morawiecki:
Fighting Solidarity was the only organization that openly proclaimed the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was no similar organization neither in Europe, nor in America, nowhere.
Kornel Morawiecki is originally from Warsaw, where he graduated from the Adam Mickiewicz Grammar School in 1958. He then attended the University of Wroclaw where he studied theoretical physics and he received a PhD from this institution for his work in quantum field theory in 1970. Two years earlier Kornel had already been an active participant in a series of student protests as well as one of the co-organisers of the demonstrations against the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. He continued his anti-communist activities during the 1970s, when he was the editor of the opposition magazine "Lower Silesian Bulletin" (Biuletyn Dolnośląski). Kornel Morawiecki was arrested for printing, in Russian, a call for the expulsion of the Soviet troops and he was subsequently tried in the first ever political process of this kind in communist Poland. In June 1979, he and a group of his friends greeted Pope John Paul II during his first return trip to his homeland with a red and white banner bearing the slogan "Faith and Independence". He worked with the Solidarity labour movement in Lower Silesia from the time it was first established and, after martial law was declared, participated in its secret planning meetings. In 1982 Kornel established the organisation "Fighting Solidarity", which called for the restoration of independence in Poland and the other countries enslaved by communism, the division of the Soviet Union into independent republics, and the unification of Germany.
Kornel successfully remained in hiding for six years, but in 1987 he was arrested and the Polish secret police strategically deported him from his homeland. He secretly returned to Poland one year later and, in 1990, ended his conspiratorial activities. He was opposed to the Polish Round Table Talks. After the fall of communism, he was a teacher at the polytechnic secondary school in Wroclaw. In 2007, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the creation of the Fighting Solidarity (Solidarność Walcząca) organisation, he refused to accept the Grand Cross of Polonia Restituta, arguing that this organisation deserved the highest Polish honour - the Order of the White Eagle. Currently Kornel is the editor-in-chief of the biweekly publication "Truth is Interesting - A Civic Newspaper".
Partners of the Memory of Nations Awards
* Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů (Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes) http://www.ustrcr.cz/en
* Český rozhlas (Czech Radio) www.rozhlas.cz
* Brücke / Most-Stiftung (Brücke / Most Foundation) http://www.bruecke-most-stiftung.de/
* Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung (Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship) www.stiftung-aufarbeitung.de
* Deutsches Polen Institut – Darmstadt (German-Polish Institute in Darmstadt) www.deutsches-polen-institut.de/
* European Network Remembrance and Solidarity http://www.enrs.eu/en
* Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service www.bstu.bund.de
* Freedom Express www.freedomexpress.enrs.eu
* Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security (ÁBTL) http://www.abtl.hu/en/node/282
* Hungarian Academy of Sciences http://mta.hu/english/
* Institute of National Remembrance http://ipn.gov.pl
* Ośrodek Karta (The KARTA Centre) http://www.karta.org.pl/
* Polish Oral History Association http://www.pthm.pl/
* Post Bellum SK www.postbellum.sk
* Slovenský rozhlas (Slovak Radio) http://www.rtvs.sk/radio/
* Terra Recognita Foundation http://www.terrarecognita.org
* The Baltic Initiative and Network http://coldwarsites.net/network
* The Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution www.rev.hu
* Ústav pamäti národa (Memory of Nations Institute) www.upn.gov.sk/
* Warsaw Rising Museum http://www.1944.pl/en/
* Jewish Memorial Černovice
* Robert Havemann Gesellschaft e.V. (Robert Havemann Society) http://www.havemann-gesellschaft.de/
* Segítség az Élethez Alapítvány http://www.messiasizsido.hu/
* The Kids of Budapest 1956 Foundation
For more information on the awards visit http://www.memoryofnationsawards.eu and http://www.pametnaroda.cz