The Summer that Changed It All: The Festival of 1955 / Warsaw Museum

The 5th World Festival of Youth and Students took place between 31 July and 15 August 1955, drawing nearly 170,000 young people from Poland and from all over the world to Warsaw. There was a propaganda goal behind the slogan “for Peace and Friendship”—to prove the superiority of socialism over capitalism. And yet, the Festival turned into a carnival of multiculturalism that anticipated political and social change and, above all, served as a formative experience for a generation.