Objects

Krystyna Sigalin (later Pajes) received a compass in the second half of the 1940s (or late 1940s and early 1950s) from Feliksa Rybus when she became a scout. They were no longer living together at the time; the carer had started her own family. She probably acquired the compass at a flea market in the immediate post-war period - it is a military compass. We do not know the identity of the former owner, a soldier (presumably who took part in the 1939 defence campaign).

It is a lockable compass. On the metal top cover, there is a figure-eight-shaped opening (horizontally) through which the glass and indications underneath can be seen. On the underside, four screws on the sides of an engraved inscription.

Krystyna Pajes, when she left Poland during March '68, could not take the compass to Sweden as it was considered an antique or perhaps even an instrument of navigational value, so she gave the souvenir to Feliksa Rybus when they said goodbye.

This compass can be regarded as a symbolic object: after all, Rybus gave it to Sigalin only a few months or at most a few years after they had returned on foot from Brandenburg in the spring of 1945.