On July 1, 2022, at the Schwanen Hotel in Rapperswil, the President of the Polish Cultural Foundation and the President of the Society of Friends of the Polish Museum in Rapperswil signed a Letter of Intent with the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Prof. Piotr Gliński, assuming the purchase and designation of the Schwanen Hotel for the new location of the Polish Museum in Rapperswil. This solemn ceremony, with the participation of the local authorities of the city and municipality of Rapperswil, was the culmination of many years of efforts to save the oldest Polish emigration institution.
Ministers Bogdan Zdrojewski, Małgorzata Omilanowska and Piotr Gliński were instrumental in ensuring that the Polish Museum remained in Rapperswil. We remember when presidents Lech Wałęsa, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, Lech Kaczyński, Bronisław Komorowski and Andrzej Duda emphasized the importance of the Polish Museum in Rapperswil, admiring its valuable collections and unique importance in spreading Polish culture and history in the international arena.
We remember the difficult period of negotiations for the seat of the Museum. The Swiss parliament invited the authorities of the city of Rapperswil to support the activities of Poles in the country and abroad. On the Swiss side, at the federal level, such support was widespread and across party lines and political differences. The Speaker of the Senate, Dr. Tomasz Grodzki, said later during his visit to Rapperswil that there had never been such an unambiguous cross-party agreement to achieve a common goal important for every Pole. It was similar in Poland, when both chambers of the Polish parliament accepted the purchase of the Schwanen property and the Sejm adopted a law enabling the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage to co-run the Polish Museum in Rapperswil together with the Libertas Foundation, the owner of the Rapperswil collection and the Society of Friends of the Polish Museum in Rapperswil, because the existence of this institution – the oldest Polish emigration museum and the oldest Swiss museum, as well as its Timeless value has always been above divisions.
The Polish government purchased the Schwanen Hotel for the needs of the Polish Museum in Rapperswil, which was maintained and run by volunteers for over 150 years. The Polish Museum in Rapperswil was the most important institution promoting Poland in Switzerland and globally, and a place for Polish-Swiss meetings, also at the highest level. Now we find out that there will be no Polish Museum in Schwanen, and the Letter of Intent is canceled by Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. In Schwanen there will be a bar and restaurant run by the Pilecki Institute. And the priceless collections and archives will remain in storage.
The further functioning of the Polish Museum hangs by a thread. Our difficult housing situation and many years of volunteer work were used to buy a hotel in Switzerland, run a bar and restaurant there, ignoring the provisions of the Letter of Intent, the provisions of the agreement signed by the Pilecki Institute with the authorities of the city and municipality of Rapperswil and the records concerning the use of the Schwanen hotel in commercial registers, where is clear mentioned that the Schwanen owner will reserve the rooms for Museum operation.