During last week they participated in number of meetings, which deepened their knowledge about the history of Poland and also complicated Polish-Jewish relations. Among the participants there were Mary Slade, barrister from Melbourne, who was born in Łódź just after the war and Frank Hornstein, an elected member of the Minnesota House of Representatives.
Their meetings mostly took place in Warsaw and Cracow. However, our guests admitted, that the most important moment of their trip to Poland was a visit to Sieradz, where they met with students from local high school, participants of the School of Dialog educational program.
It was an extraordinary meeting. Students guided our group to places connected to the history of Sieradz Jews. Together they visited an Ary Szternfeld memory plaque, synagogue, place of the former Jewish bath (mikvah) and the memorial wall near the Collegiate church, where there are plaques reminding of the history of Sieradz Jews.
For students the most memorable experience was meeting with Mary Slade from Melbourne. Mary is a board member of the Melbourne Jewish Holocaust Centre and she has Polish roots – her mother is originally e from Sieradz, and Mary herself was born in Łódź just after the war.
“Mrs. Marysia” (that’s how Mary was addressed by the students) told young people from Sieradz a dramatic story about her parents being the last survivors from Łódź ghetto. Listening to Mary’s story and stories of other Polish Jews, was a strong and extraordinary experience for our students.
In the end of the study trip our participants and students, with a help from the priest prelate Marian Bronikowski, planted a tree in the church garden in memory of this exceptional meeting. Little oak tree with a memorial plaque, stands in a place with a view to the synagogue. The plaque says:
“In memory of the Jewish men and women of Sieradz who throughout the ages built and developed this town together with their Christian neighbors and who were expelled and murdered out of human wickedness.
Participants of the School of Dialogue project and the Study Tour organized by the Forum for Dialogue.”
One of the participants of the study trip, Karen Shapiro said in the end of the trip:
“Knowing we were the first Jews these students have ever met, and the ability to interact with them in a positive manner was critical to erasure of negative Jewish stereotypes. That I could help in that matter gives me great satisfaction”.
“The project is co-financed from the funds granted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the competition for the public task “Cooperation with Polish Diaspora and Poles Abroad in 2014.”
