The shipyard in the northern Polish port city was the birthplace of the Solidarity union and freedom movement that helped bring about the collapse of communism in Poland and throughout Eastern Europe in the 1980s.
The Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage is spearheading an effort to have the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) add the site to its World Heritage List, Poland’s niezalezna.pl website has reported.
It quoted an official as saying that the Polish shipyard is “associated with an important stage in the history of mankind and ideas of exceptional importance to world history.”
The shipyard “also meets another very important criterion, which is authenticity,” said the official, Bartosz Skaldawski, head of a government agency called the National Heritage Board of Poland.
Skaldawski’s institution, which is tasked with protecting the nation’s cultural heritage, has launched a social campaign to encourage Poles to support the government effort.
The Gdańsk shipyard rose to international fame in 1980 when it saw the birth of organised resistance to communist dictatorship in Eastern Europe.
The UNESCO World Heritage List includes sites such as the Great Wall of China and the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes.
A prehistoric flint mine complex in Poland, Krzemionki Opatowskie, was in July designated as a World Heritage site.
(gs/pk)
Source: niezalezna.pl