We invite you to the Warsaw premiere of the latest book by Nike Readers' Award 2022 winner Joanna Ostrowska, "Traces. The Story of a Certain Archive." The meeting will be hosted by journalist and director of Radio Trójka, Agnieszka Szydłowska. Excerpts from the book will be read by Justyna Wasilewska. "Traces" is, on one hand, a record of the researcher's "queer" archive—ephemeral and fluid—created over the past two decades, and on the other, an attempt to address the topic of rewriting the history of people who, for various reasons, have been overlooked in the context of Polish collective memory. The moving book is dominated by stories of non-normative individuals who survived World War II and tried to find themselves in a new reality. ✨ When? Thursday, October 23, 2025, 6:00 PM 📍 Where? Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. During the meeting, the book will be available for purchase at the museum bookstore. The book is supported by: - TOK FM - Museum of the Second World War - histmag.pl - Queer Museum More about the book: "Joanna Ostrowska's impressive archival 'investigations' break the seals of our imaginations and moral judgments, allowing what was meant to remain hidden, overlooked, or deliberately invalidated to be heard. A meticulous inquiry, a powerful, unsettling read." Joanna Kuciel-Frydryszak "After her pioneering research on forced sex workers and the persecution of non-heteronormative people, Joanna Ostrowska returns to already studied cases to 'unblind' what she previously missed, to bring to light the 'queer moment seen in the background,' to reveal it in the 'glimpses of biographies' of those—still only a few—stigmatized before, during, and after World War II. By enemies and by their own. She holds up a mirror to all of us. Maybe some will feel ashamed." Anda Rottenberg More information: https://wydawnictwo.krytykapolityczna.pl/slady-joanna Joanna Ostrowska – PhD in humanities in the field of history, also studied at the Institute of Audiovisual Arts at Jagiellonian University, Department of Jewish Studies at Jagiellonian University, Gender Studies at the University of Warsaw, Department of Hebrew Studies at the University of Warsaw, and the Polish National Film, Television and Theatre School in Łódź. Academic lecturer and playwright. Member of the Program Council of QueerMuzeum Warsaw. Author of books: "Silenced. Forced Sexual Labor During World War II" (2018), "My Führer! Victims of Forced Sterilization in Lower Silesia 1934–44" (2019), and "Them. Homosexuals During World War II" (2021), awarded the Nike Readers' Award 2022.
