To the Manor Born

The district court in the eastern town of Lubartow has ruled that the heirs of the aristocratic Zamojski family have the right to compensation for the unlawful nationalisation in the 1940s of their family park and palace complex in the locality of Kozlowka. Built in baroque style the palace now houses a museum filled with thousands of impressive and extremely precious exhibits.

Living in California nowadays Jadwiga Inka Zamojska, the daughter of Aleksander and Jadwiga, the last owners of the Kozlowka estate, welcomes the ruling. She says that although the next step will be talks on compensation the family wants to preserve the museum.

"The next step, of course, is to start discussions on certain amount of compensation or come to a certain agreement of how to make just reparation. However, it's our most intention that the museum remains the way it is because it is a real piece of treasure for Poland, for its people, for Europe, as it is for us."

Part of that intention is the project to set up a special educational foundation in the Kozlowka Museum.

"There will be a foundation that will be co-working with the museum and with its goals being mostly educational. And it will promote the access of the people to precisely the history that can be provided at the Kozlowka museum."

Jadwiga Inka Zamojska also recalls the comfortable feelings she has while visiting Kozlowka every time.

"Kozlowka we try to visit as often as we can. In the last couple of years, I think we were three times, and it evokes very warm feelings. My brother remembers growing up in Kozlowka, so for him very special feelings. For me special feelings because all my information about Kozlowka came from my parents in terms of all the stories and how life was in Kozlowka so I can now visualize all these stories. But mostly we feel very comfortable, very at home. Everybody is absolutely welcoming and warm to us. It's pleasant to be home and it's a great honour to be home."

There are plenty of reasons for preserving a special place of historical importance like the palace in Kozlowka. Apart from thousands baroque-era exhibits recalling a bygone era of Poland's nobility it also houses the Museum of Socialist Realism". Located in the right-wing of the Palace it includes paintings, posters, statues and propaganda banners that recall the Stalinist era in Poland's history. Ironically this museum of communism, which was nationalised together with the entire palace, now again, belongs to the Zamojski family.