Three small-format sheets with drawings of Soviet camp barracks, found while leafing through a thin, unremarkable file kept in the Lithuanian Special Archives, delighted and surprised. Drawings of camps are extremely rare in files compiled by Soviet security, because prisoners were forbidden to draw the territory of the camps. Therefore, the find not only interested, but also raised the question of who the author of the drawings was, why he ended up in the camp.
The identity of the author was only established after a careful study of the case documents and the discovery of several barely legible original signatures. It turned out that it was Barbara Narembska, who lived in Vilnius and later became a famous Polish artist.
The artists, architects and other creators of interwar Vilnius are little known in today's Lithuania. Their work is not only rejected by a large part of Lithuanian society as foreign, but has also been little studied by scholars. Some of these creators are almost forgotten in Lithuania, but are well known. in Poland Barbara Zofija Narembska-Dembska-Kozlovska (born 1931), an artist who lived in VilniusBarbara Zofia Narębska-Dębska-Kozłowska) and her father, the chief architect of Vilnius (1928–1939) Stefanas Narembskis (Stefan Narebski).
The drawings found by chance in the file prompted us to take an interest in the life story and work of these (un)known creators. We hope that the virtual story about them prepared by the Lithuanian Special Archives, illustrated with unique drawings of the future famous Polish artist made in the Soviet camp, photographs of buildings designed by her father, which are well-known to many Vilnius residents, and documents reflecting brutal Soviet repressions, will remind us of the undeservedly forgotten pages of Vilnius' cultural history.
You can read the story and view the illustrations on the Lithuanian Archives virtual exhibition website: https://bit.ly/4jB0by0
