Minister praises Occupation Museum's work

Aug 03, 2000

While stressing the good previous cooperation between the Foreign Ministry and the museum, Berzins noted that possibilities of the Latvian Institute should be exploited more in informing society abroad, the Foreign Ministry press office said.

Berzins met with the Occupation Museum Foundation's council chairman, Paulis Lazda, his deputy Ojars Celle and Latvian Institute director Ojars Kalnins. During the meeting, the officials discussed researching Latvia's history, and reflected on Latvia's occupation and related events.

The foreign minister, who is a historian himself, praised the new exhibitions planned by the museum that would put a special emphasis on the Holocaust and the fate of the Russian prisoners of war, as well as the travelling exhibition "Latvia Returns to Europe," made by the museum.

The exhibition next year will be taken to Madrid, Florence, Rome and Budapest. It is planned, in cooperation with the Latvian Institute, to issue materials of the exhibition in a brochure.

Lazda said that the musem needs financial support from the state to implement new projects.

The Occupation Museum is a private museum founded and managed by an open public foundation. The museum's exposition displays and explains circumstances and consequences of the 50 years Latvia lived under the Soviet occupation. The museum has gathered documentary and item evidence from the occupation period and is researching and publishing them.

The museum is regularly attended by delegations of Latvia's official visitors while about a half of the museum's visitors are foreign tourists. The museum's building has been given under the ownership of the Riga City Council by a government order in 1998.

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