European Museum of the Year Award

The European Museum of the Year Award and the series of related awards are given out each year at the annual conference and award ceremony.

The rigorous judging process involving visits to up to 60 museums culminates in an annual conference with the participation of 250 - 300 leading museum professionals, at which the candidates present their museums, the winners are announced, and the underlying values and innovative ideas in the European museum field are discussed, renewed and reinterpreted.

With EMYA’s accumulated over 40 years of traditions and insights into the societal and community needs, which drive, create, develop and sustain museums as crucial civic spaces for the exploration of Europe’s heritage, the conference serves as a continuous benchmark for innovation and best practices for the sector.

About the host

The Sybir Memorial Museum opened in 2021 in Białystok, near the border with Belarus. It stands on the original site of the Poleski Railway Station. Bialystok was assigned to the Soviet sphere in the German-Soviet division of Poland and became part of the Belarusian Soviet Republic after the Soviet annexation.

The museum tells the story of successive deportations of people from Poland to Siberia, northern Russia, and Kazakhstan during the Soviet occupation and the division of Poland in the period 1940-41, and deportations during the communist period of the Soviet Union after the Second World War until 1952. The museum expertly balances a museum for the history that Poles associate with Siberia and a memorial for the last survivors of deportations and their relatives. It addresses an important moment in European history and, more broadly, deportation and transgenerational memories of struggle. The museum aims to play a community-building role in gathering the memories of individual experiences and testimonies from witnesses to history. Its ability to convey history through workshops, events, media, publications, and new formats is commendable and successfully reaches broad audiences.

The museum is effective in addressing the universality of experiences such as deportation, enslavement, exile, struggle for survival, care for the family in times of danger, and mutual support of people in difficult conditions. The museum recognises the importance of difficult memories within today’s Polish and European communities and a commitment to democratic ideals and respect for human rights.

The museum was awarded the prestigious Council of Europe Museum Prize at the EMYA 2024 edition.

Sybir Memorial Museum