This is the English version of an article first published in Polish: read the Polish original. It refers to source material: wilanow.pl. The text is our own commentary, not a translation or copy of that source.
Under the dome you can see from half the district, people don't only pray and visit exhibitions. The Museum of John Paul II and Cardinal Wyszyński in Wilanów has just opened applications for the 8th edition of the project "You Shall Love" (Będziesz miłował), in which volunteers spend two months digging through archives instead of their phones.
The task is concrete: prepare biographical notes on the chaplains of the Warsaw Uprising, carry out historical research and learn to work with archival sources, so that short, accessible texts about their lives come out of it at the end. You only need to be 16 or older, and you don't have to live in Warsaw. Work starts on 1 August.
And here's the detail that turns this into more than ordinary paperwork volunteering: the project runs for exactly 63 days, the same length as the Warsaw Uprising itself in 1944. The programme also includes training and educational walks tracing the footsteps of the Uprising's chaplains, so it isn't purely desk work from day one.
Wyszyński later recalled finding a note with two words among the ruins of burning Warsaw: "You shall love." That's where the project's name comes from, and today it searches for traces of people like him.
A museum you drive past without going in
Most Wilanów residents pass this dome every day, on the way to work or to run errands, and treat it as part of the scenery rather than a place to visit. This call for volunteers is a rare chance to turn passively driving by into something that outlasts a single walk through an exhibition: a specific biography, a specific story pulled out of obscurity, with your name on it.
The deadline was 29 July. Full details are on the museum's website.
