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# Poland’s first LGBTQ+ museum opens its doors
- URL: https://www.scenemag.co.uk/polands-first-lgbtq-museum-opens-its-doors/
- Published: 2024-12-07T11:30:15.000Z
- Updated: 2024-12-07T10:56:41.000Z
- Description: Poland’s first LGBTQ+ museum, which houses almost 150 artefacts offering a timeline of Poland’s LGBTQ movement’s struggle for recognition, opened its doors on Friday, December 6. Dubbed a landmark moment by a community still striving for full legal rights, the museum was set up by Polish LGBTQ+ righ
- Author: Graham Robson
- Tags: LGBT, LGBTQ, Poland, Warsaw

**Poland**’s first LGBTQ+ museum, which houses almost 150 artefacts offering a timeline of Poland’s LGBTQ movement’s struggle for recognition, opened its doors on **Friday, December 6**.

Dubbed a landmark moment by a community still striving for full legal rights, the museum was set up by Polish LGBTQ+ rights group Lambda and is the first of a kind “in all of post-communist Europe”, said its director **Krzysztof Kliszczynski**, who is “overjoyed” to see it coming to life.

The museum traces the history of LGBTQ+ people living in Poland back to the 16th century, illustrating it with letters, pictures, and early examples of activism — often clandestine out of fear of oppression.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony gathered dozens of LGBTQ+ Polish campaigners, some of whom have spent decades fighting for equal rights.

Among them was **Andrzej Selerowicz**, who in 1983 launched the first Polish newsletter for gay men.

Poring over a glass case in the Warsaw museum, Selerowicz pointed at a pocket-sized, circular picture showing two young men, hugging cheek to cheek, smiling to the camera.

“This is a photo of me and my partner to the present moment, taken 45 years ago,” said the 76-year-old author and translator who lives in Vienna.

Researchers say it has not always been easy to gather artefacts documenting the often-forgotten struggle of the LGBTQ+ community.

“A huge part of this queer history is also very private… and very often destroyed after the death of these people, and often deliberately so,” said **Piotr Laskowski**, a **University of Warsaw** historian.