Introducing the initiative of creating SYMBIOSIS, we would like to explain the motives which dispose us to do so. Perhaps we should begin with elucidating what is, in our opinion, SYMBIOSIS to become: an association working for the popularization and putting into the social circulation the achievements of culture and tradition of the representatives of the nationalities living in Poland. This contribution interests us not only in the past tense. The pages that are written today by the rooted in the Polish soil Belorussians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Germans, Gypsies, Jews, Chechs, Tartars, by the Greek and Romanian emigrants; by the residents from the countries of Latin America and by the other small nationalities living in Poland, are not less important.

The interpenetration of cultures, the coexistence compatible with tolerance and acceptation of other people's distinct features - that is precisely "SYMBIOSIS". We would like to introduce its character and importance to the guests visiting poland, as they lack the information about the melting pot of nationalities from which emerges the shape of today's democracy. One's contacts only with the reality of slogans written on the walls and the publications, aimed at achieving immediate political gains, of the small, but strongly accenting thei programs, parties and groups - in many cases lead to false and simplified conclusions damaging Poland's opinion in the world. That is why the creation of the true picture of coexistence of nationalities also paves the way to Europe.

So the solicitude for a vivid and interesting presentation of the national mosaic; enabling the foreigners to find in one place and "under one roof" the diffused literature and factography on the present and past Poland; the contacts with the works of material culture and the art of nationalities which are linked with this geographical region and this land by common fat6e and identical history, is an important, or even the most important element of SYMBIOSIS activities.

SYMBIOSIS

c/o Mrs. Weronika Kozakiewicz

ul. Piekna 11, m.1

00-549 Warszawa