Dear Friends,

with my term of office ending for reasons beyond my control, please allow me to share with you the joy I experienced when building the Polish-Hungarian Cooperation Institute from the ground up. The efforts began with the personal funding of printing paper and the Institute’s first seals and culminated in the Institute becoming a living memorial to Professor Wacław Felczak. The Institute is a tribute to a great Polish patriot, an outstanding historian wholeheartedly devoted to building Polish-Hungarian and Central European cooperation, which ultimately led to the establishment of the Visegrád Group and initiatives such as the Three Seas and Europe of the Carpathians.

The Wacław Felczak Polish-Hungarian Cooperation Institute regrettably continues to be a unique institution in Poland because its activities focus on describing the prevailing reality and simultaneously aiming to change the existing circumstances. The Institute undertakes these activities in a variety of areas, including science, education, culture and sport. We should not forget about programmes implemented “here and now” and projects that invest in the knowledge of the young, future leaders of public opinion who are present among students, journalists or local government officials.

The trilingual portal www.Kurier.Plus not only informs about the undertakings of the Institute but also provides reliable information on the key events in Central Europe without unnecessary sensationalism (there are more than 5,000 articles in total). Other achievements of the Institute include: as many as 1220 participants in the summer university – the School of Leaders; 600 Polish language students in Hungary and Hungarian language students in Poland; almost 200 funded projects and 200 in-house programmes; 67 awarded scholarships; 32 books and publications, including the first-ever multi-disciplinary Visegrad Atlas. Of course, these are only some examples of the Institute’s wide-ranging activities and achievements. No enumerations can express the significance of the emergence of thousands of talented and energetic young people both in Poland and Hungary, including students and beneficiaries of the Institute’s diverse programmes. Thanks to the knowledge they have acquired, never again will they become passive observers of the “God’s Playground”, as Norman Davies aptly put it, or of the divide et impera policy, of which the states and peoples of Central Europe have all too often become victims in the past.

I would like to thank everyone involved in the establishment and growth of the Wacław Felczak Institute. I would particularly like to thank the Institute’s young, some even very young, employees and collaborators for the work they have done and the good cheer with which they have accepted the unfair criticism directed at the Institute for the sole reason that it conducted activities specified in the governmental act. Noon always follows 11 am. Without fail. Even if the hands of the clock seem to be going backwards.

The Professor’s student

Maciej Szymanowski