Europe Trip 2025 - Gdańsk - World War Two History Museum

The WW2 museum has an interesting design. It's like an inverted building: you start at the ground level (0) and move down to -3. Somehow, this is the best photo I have of it:

The museum is the dark red structure center-right.

There is a convenient city bike station near the museum. The MEVO bikes are very expensive for occasional users (they charge per minute, like the e-scooters) and relatively cheap for monthly or yearly subscriptions. MEVO will cost you 3 PLN for 20 minute ride (push bike) vs 0 PLN for Veturilo in Warsaw, and 9 PLN for 60 minutes vs 1 PLN in Warsaw. The e-bikes are 6 PLN and 19 PLN in Gdańsk, and 0 PLN and 6 PLN in Warsaw. The design of the MEVO e-bike sucks too. While riding, it felt like the handle bar was not directly connected to the wheel, like there was a delay between turning the handle bar and the wheel reacting. Strange. When I mentioned that to a young local man, who had a problem with his bike not locking and was about to call technical support, he said the system in Gdańsk was better, because he could ride farther, and that he thought the system in Warsaw sucked. Ok.

Back to the museum. It's quite new. It's logically organised. Its focus is on Europe and Poland. It has a few dioramas. It's interesting. I learned a few things. It's not huge, but there is easily enough to see and read for a 2-3 hour visit. 

Pre-war Polish city street

Post-war Polish city street.
In Warsaw, there are still some buildings with visible bullet or shell damage.

The exposition starts with a glimpse of totalitarian ideologies: Italian fascism, German national-socialism, Soviet communism.

Duce's face watching people from above with the wall of "SI" - "yes" in Italian. 

Hitler's master race must not show compassion towards Poles.

If you think wrong, Stalin will have you mercilessly destroyed.

In Poland, two of these totalitarian regimes worked together from 1939 to 1941:

German soldiers welcoming Soviet tanks.

The cruelty and terror directed at unarmed, innocent people from 1939 to 1945 is hard to imagine. Some examples are presented in the museum. 

Public hanging in Warsaw.

In blue - the border of Greater Germany. The two areas inside it are regions temporarily populated mostly by Czechs and Poles: Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and General Government.