Pińczów
Reconnecting Ties
Reconnecting Ties
June 2013
In June 2013, in partnership with Facing History and Ourselves, one of the most important U.S. educational organizations, Forum for Dialogue organized a study tour of modern Poland for a delegation of American Jewish educators . The visit’s highlight was a meeting between the program participants and School of Dialogue students from Pińczów.
During a walking tour of Pinczów prepared as part of the School of Dialogue program, the students shared with the visitors their knowledge of the local Jewish history, which they gained through independent research as a result of Forum workshops. The route included stops at the site of the Jewish cemetery, and the renovated Pińczów synagogue surrounded by a wall made of fragments of recovered matzevot. The students also shared their personal stories regarding preservation and commemoration of Jewish life in Pińczów.
Visiting Pińczów and witnessing the dedication and knowledge exhibited by local teenagers had a huge impact on the study visit participants. They were particularly moved by the choice of words: the students used words such as “neighbor” when talking about the Jewish population, and referred to “our history” when talking about Jewish history of Pinczów.. In their comments after the meeting, the study visit participants emphasized how much this visit changed their perception of Polish/Jewish relations and past. As one of the participants, Jack Lipinsky, wrote: “I will carry the conversations and what I’ve learned from this trip forward with me into my classroom in the fall, and for years to come. I will tell my students of the stories I heard, and the sights I saw, and my feelings.”
Jagoda Szkarłat May 16th, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
October 2015
In October 2015 Forum’s guests from the U.S, Canada and Australia explored Warsaw, and Cracow. Another important stop for the tour participants was a visit to Ożarów to meet students who had participated in our School of Dialogue program in 2014.
Read the memories of Carol Weir, the meeting participant, about that special meeting:
“This was a trip of coincidences – or was it?
I could hardly catch my breath as we drove past the sign for Ozarow and into the town. I am a teacher, and driving up to the school seemed very natural; but at the same time I knew this school was different. Not the school or the students exactly, but being at this school in the town where my Bubby (grandmother) had lived as a little girl. The students were delightful – so polite, so enthusiastic and just as curious about us. The first part of the program consisted of some ice breakers for all of us to get to know each other; and the first student I met was named Maya, a bright and articulate girl. Maya is also the name of my first granddaughter and the two girls had very similar personalities. When I shared this with the Maya in front of me her eyes lit up and we had an instant bond.
The students then continued with their formal video presentation, describing the Jewish history and including pictures of Jewish sites, some of which still exist. I had brought some pictures of my Bubby in Canada and was asked to share these with the students. I thought they might enjoy seeing pictures of someone who had actually lived here but left in 1920.
In doing my family research I had found what I believed to be the actual address of the house my great grandfather had lived in. With the help of Google maps, I had been able to locate those streets, which still exist today! One of the teachers looked at the address; and as she put her arm around me she said that the house he had lived in had actually been one of the houses in the presentation and that she would take me to the spot where this house had stood.
As part of their project the students had done research and prepared a walking tour of the Jewish sites in Ozarow. After stopping at the town square we continued to the cemetery. While there were no names of relatives (to my knowledge) on the headstones, I had an overwhelming sense of being with family as I stood there. That day was the actual yahrzeit (anniversary of my mother’s death) 4 years earlier.
My mother had never lived here but the power of reciting the memorial prayer for her, surrounded by my husband, the members of Forum for Dialogue mission and these young Polish students, in the cemetery in the town where her mother had been born and lived was truly an emotional experience I will cherish all of my life.
We continued our tour as the teacher guided me to the corner where my great grandfather’s house had been. Standing there I felt the presence of this ancestor I had never known, and whose name I had only recently learned. I gathered stones from the ground to bring back and share with my siblings and cousins at home.
Back in the town square it was time to say good-bye to the teachers and students. They had shared their town with us and yet we also were sharing with them.
I hugged my new ‘family’ as one student called out, “don’t forget to say good bye to ‘your’ Maya.“
Carol Weir, a Jewish Canadian, had come on this mission, but was leaving as Carol Weir, a Jewish Canadian who had found her Polish roots.
Was it a coincidence that our mission went to my grandmother’s town? Was it a coincidence that the first student I met had the same name as my first grand-daughter? Was it a coincidence that my great grandfather’s house was shown in the video presentation? Was it a coincidence that we were able to stand on the corner where his house had been? Was it a coincidence that we were in Ozarow on the memorial anniversary for my mother?
I don’t think so. I believe it was all meant to be.”
Jagoda Szkarłat May 12th, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
June 2014
In June 2014 an amazing meeting took place during the conducting School of Dialogue program in Nasielsk. Students participating in the project connected via Skype with Maurice Chandler, Holocaust Survivor, and Glenn Kurtz, author of the book “Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film”. In October 2014, Glenn Kurtz visited high school in Nasielsk with the group of Survivors and descendants of Nasielsk Jews. These events had huge impact on local community’s attitude towards the Nasielsk’s Jewish heritage, as Glenn Kurtz shared with us:
“In 2014, the Forum for Dialogue held a “School of Dialogue” with students at the high school in Nasielsk, Poland. At that time, I had been conducting research about the town for two years. My grandfather, David Kurtz, was born in Nasielsk in 1888. After emigrating to the United States as a small child with his family in the 1890s, my grandfather returned to visit his birthplace in the summer of 1938.
On this trip, my grandfather brought a home movie camera, and he captured three minutes of footage of the Jewish community of Nasielsk: excited children shouting and waving; hundreds of townspeople exiting the synagogue after a special ceremony. One year later, Nasielsk was overrun by the German army. Of Nasielsk’s 3,000 Jews, fewer than one hundred survived the Holocaust. My grandfather’s film contains the only known moving pictures of this lost community. My research focused on identifying the individuals in these haunting images.
The School of Dialogue presented an extraordinary opportunity to bring the history and fate of Nasielsk’s Jewish citizens back into the town’s consciousness, and to make this history real and personal for the students. Working with the Forum’s vibrant and expert team, we arranged for the students to spend a day speaking via Skype with a survivor I had found during my research, one of the excited children who appeared in my grandfather’s 1938 film. This survivor, by then 89 years old, was only 16 years old when he escaped the Warsaw Ghetto—the same age as the students who participated in the School of Dialogue in 2014. Sharing his recollections of growing up in Nasielsk, and recounting the chilling and powerful story of how he survived the war by passing as a Roman Catholic Pole, this survivor helped the students grasp the real-life experience of the history they were studying.
The lessons of the School for Dialogue continue to make a difference in present-day Nasielsk. In the summer of 2016— and we anticipate again in the summer of 2017—a multi-national, multi-faith group of volunteers began work to reclaim and rededicate Nasielsk’s Jewish cemetery. Alumni of the School for Dialogue, along with current high school students, town officials, and ordinary members of the local community, are all participating as we clear away the years of neglect—the weeds and bushes, as well as the bitterness and mutual misunderstandings—to bring this ground, and consequently, the 400-year history of Nasielsk’s Jewish community, back into the light. The School of Dialogue marked a turning point in the lives of these students and in the collective consciousness of the town itself.”
Jagoda Szkarłat April 26th, 2017
Posted In: Without category
June 2013
On Saturday 15 June 2013, a group of Polish Friends of the Forum for Dialogue participated in a walking tour around Jewish sites of a small town Zaręby Kościelne, guided by junior high school students. The meeting started with a joint workshops allowing the students to get to know their guests. They also watched fragments of a film recorded in their town in the 30′ of the 20th century, which now is part of the YIVO collection in New York. Then, the junior high school students guided everyone around the sites connected to the Jewish history of their town.
Jagoda Szkarłat April 19th, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
July 2016
Between July 18-25, Forum for Dialogue in partnership with Facing History and Ourselves and Polish Embassy in Washington organized the Facing History and Ourselves study trip to Poland. The program of the trip included meetings and discussions with experts in the areas of Polish/Jewish relations, as well as historical and contemporary situation of Poland. The group visited Warsaw, Lublin, the Majdanek Memorial and Museum, and also Zamość, where participants met with the School of Dialogue students and Leader of Dialogue Marek Kołcon.
On Friday, July 22, Facing History and Ourselves educators held a Shabbat dinner in Szczebrzeszyn with Leaders of Dialogue and Alumni of the School of Dialogue. They sang, bonded, and welcomed the Sabbath together in what many participants called the highlight of the trip.
“As a Jewish person studying the Holocaust, the horror can be overwhelming. The horror builds anger and disappointment. I came to Poland expecting to feel all of that and more. But I never expected to feel hopeful. I never expected to meet young people who are working so hard to preserve something so precious. Thank you for teaching me, inspiring me, and reminding me that despite how bleak the world can seem, there is always hope for connection.“
April 2015
On Friday April 24, 2015, the participants in the School of Dialogue program in Zamość met with a group of representatives of Italian Jewish community who came to Poland at the invitation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The School of Dialogue program completed at the school only one day before. The guests from Italy where therefore the first to take part in the walking tour prepared by the students! The walking tour around Jewish sites usually goes through an old part of the town. But the students of the Second High School, together with their teacher Marek Kołcon, prepared a tour nearby their school, the New Town, where the ghetto was located and its history still rests undiscovered. Even the local priest got involved in the project and lent a megaphone. This allowed not only the guests from Italy to take part in the tour but also the passersby. The guests were impressed by the efforts put in the preparation of the walking tour. Some of them are teachers in Jewish schools. Maybe in the future they will visit Zamość with their students…
July 2014
On Thursday, July 3 the nine-person Forum for Dialogue team took part in the first official Bar Mitzvah in 75 years in the ”Synagogue” Center in Zamość. Approximately 80 people attended the Bar Mitzvah of Jake Wisnik, led by Rabbi David Holtz. One year ago Jake’s parents, Robert and Eva, attended a study trip to Poland organized by the Forum, which was an amazing experience for them.
“Forum for Dialogue is directly responsible for discovering the depth of our Polish roots and for making what was an impossible thought- that an American Reform Jewish family having a Bar Mitzvah in Poland, land of our ancestors for over 1000 years, could become a reality. The Forum has literally changed my life, Eva’s life and now our children’s lives in a deep and powerful way,” said Robert during the ceremony.
The Wisniks are also connected with Zamość by their personal history – Eva’s father, Abram Szlak was born in Zamość in 1935. Had it not been for World War 2, he would have become a Bar Mitzvah in the very synagogue where Jake became one. Following the Bar Mitzvah, students from the C.K. Norwid High School who had participated in Forum for Dialogue’s School of Dialogue program, gave a walking tour of Zamość’s Jewish sites.
Eva Wisnik with her husband Robert participated in study trip to Poland organized by Forum for Dialogue in autumn 2013. As a result of the visit rose an idea of Jake Wisnik’s Bar Mitzvah in Zamość synagogue.
Check how Fox News World covered Bar Mitzvah.
Jagoda Szkarłat April 19th, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
September 2016
In September 2016 Forum for Dialogue organized the first Canadian study trip to Poland. After three intensive days in Warsaw participants traveled to Lublin, Radom and Krakow. It was in Radom that our guests met with local high school students and together walked around Jewish sights of the town. It was not the first time that the Nicolaus Copernicus High School hosted our group. However, this meeting was even more special, since the participants were members of Beit Radom synagogue in Toronto – a synagogue that was founded by Jewish emigrants form Radom in the early 20th century. For many trip participants, the highlight of the trip was a Shabbat dinner organized in Radom, which gathered trip participants, students and local Leaders of Dialogue. An evening full of reflection and joy.
September 2016
For the first time in decades, on April 19, 2016 a Passover Seder was organized in Radom as part of the Jewish Culture Festival “Trace”. This moving interfaith event was a result of cooperation of Forum study trip participants Sharon Grosfeld and Hilda Chazanovitz, whose families come from Radom, with Zbigniew Wieczorek, one of the participants in our Leaders of Dialogue program. They met last year, during our Friends of the Forum journey to Poland.
Earlier in the day, before the Seder, guests from the U.S. were taken on a walking tour following the footsteps of Jews of Radom by students of a local high school that took part in our School of Dialogue program a few years back.
For us at the Forum, it was inspiring to see our various programs bear fruit in this one amazing moment. Take a look at this short clip about Passover Seder organized in Radom for the first time in decades.
July 2015
Between June 27 and July 5, twenty-four friends of Forum for Dialogue from the U.S. and Australia joined us for what was an incredible trip, our first-ever Friends of the Forum Journey to Poland. Our group from Friends of the Forum arrived in Radom on July 1 in the morning to meet the students from Nicolaus Copernicus High School, considered to be one of the most active Schools of Dialogue. For Irving Kempner, Sharon Grosfeld and Hilda Chazanovitz this town has a very special meaning because of their family roots. For them and for other group participants walking around Radom tracing the Jewish past was very important.
Friends of the Forum journey to Poland was also an opportunity to meet Leaders of Dialogue: activists from all across Poland, devoted to teaching about and preserving the Jewish heritage in their towns and cities.
In Radom we met with devoted teachers who have been researching and spreading the knowledge about the city’s Jewish community for years: Ewa Kutyła, Agnieszka Brzeska-Pająk and Zbigniew Wieczorek. On July 1 they all sat down to talk with the descendants of Radom Jews who were among the participants of the Friends of the Forum trip. They discussed their motivations, their responsibility and their sense of purpose in what they do. Our guests responded with declarations of what it means for them to meet such people in Radom today.
We would like to thank Brenna Cukier for producing this short movie.
November 2014
A meeting with high school students from Radom, participants in the School of Dialogue educational program, made a huge impression on the study visit participants hosted by Forum for Dialogue. It was even more meaningful for one of the members of the delegation, as her family comes from Radom.
May 2014
Members of the New York Board of the Facing History and Ourselves, Lori and Mark Fife, came to Radom where Lori Fife’s father was born. They were hosted by the students of Nicolas Copernicus High School, a school that since 2011 has been continuing activities initiated by the School of Dialogue program. The students organized a two-hour long tour of the town, during which the participants visited houses where Lori Fife’s family once lived, and the monument commemorating the synagogue of Radom which was destroyed by the Nazis during the German occupation.
April 2014
On April 26, on the initiative of a long-time friend of the Forum Irv Kempner from Newton in Massachusetts, a group of American adult participants of the March of the Living from Chicago, Miami, Boston and other cities visited Radom. Students from Nicolaus Copernicus High School No 1, who continue actively the School of Dialogue program, hosted participants of the March and showed them the Jewish historical buildings of their town. The students guided their guests around Radom, showing them not only the usual sites of their tour, but also helped some of the participants to find places connected with their family history. The visit allowed the Polish youth and their Jewish guests to have honest discussions.
April 2013
On April 6, 2013, a very special meeting took place in Radom between a group of high school students and Irving Kempner from Boston, who visited Poland to participate in the March of the Living. In the course of his visit, Irving Kempner decided to visit Radom, which is the birthplace of his mother Maryla Freidenreich. She was born before World War II and survived the Holocaust along with her younger sister.
The meeting was hosted by students from Nicolaus Copernicus High School No.1 in Radom, who participated in 2011 School of Dialogue workshops that Irving Kempner had sponsored. Together with their teachers, Agnieszka Brzeska and Ewa Kutyła, students took their guest on a walking tour of Jewish and contemporary sites in Radom. The tour route also included sites connected to Irving Kempner’s family history – the house where Freidenreich sisters had lived, tenements housing shops run by family relatives and schools his mother Maryla attended – Jan Kochanowski Public School and a private middle school run by Maria Gajl.
In exchange for the guided tour, the guest shared with the students stories his mother told him about growing up in Radom and the details of his turbulent family history during World War II. Visiting School of Dialogue participants allowed Irving Kempner to see the sites he had only heard about in family stories. After his visit to Radom, he admitted that this very special meeting with Radom high school students sparked a personal connection to the town that he will cherish for the rest of his life.
November 2012
On November 14, 2012 a group Jewish community leaders from the United States visited Radom as part of their study tour to Poland organized by Forum for Dialogue. The visit was especially important for one of the participants – Sharon Grosfeld – whose father was born in that city.
Guests met with graduates of School of Dialogue program from Nicolaus Copernicus High School No.1 in Radom and their teachers Agnieszka Brzeska and Ewa Kutyła. Following an ice-breaker workshops at the school, students led a walking tour through Jewish Radom for their guests. The route had been developed by the students in the course of School of Dialogue workshops. Upon Sharon Grosfeld’s request, the tour began with a visit in an arms factory that had been the workplace of her father and other family members prior to deportations to concentration camps. Next stop for the group was the renovated Jewish cemetery and a walk through the town’s streets while listening to stories about their Jewish residents and everyday Jewish life. Students acted as hosts and presented their guests with their discoveries, using archival photographs as visual aids.
Guests were greatly impressed by the energy, involvement, language skills and factual knowledge demonstrated by the high school students. Afterwards, Sharon Grosfeld wrote: “I am grateful to the students, teachers and principals of Nicolaus Copernicus High School, who not only participated in the School of Dialogue program, but also had tremendous impact on issues related to restoring the memory of Radom’s Jewish residents and their prewar life. These students are ambassadors of reconciliation and a hope for a peaceful future.”
November 2011
While planning the visit to Poland of Norman Eisen, US Ambassador to Czech Republic, the US Embassy in Warsaw approached the Forum for Dialogue to arrange an event with students who took part in our School of Dialogue program. On November 3rd 2011, the students of Nicolaus Copernicus High School hosted the international delegation: US Ambassador Norman Eisen with his family, US Ambassador to Poland Lee Feinstein and accompanying staff from the US Embassy in Warsaw.
The delegation was guided through Radom’s Jewish sites by the students, on the basis of the tour they prepared for their fellow schoolmates during School of Dialogue workshops. The group visited the area of the former ghetto, the site where the synagogue used to stand, Jewish cemetery and many other places important to Radom’s pre-war Jewish community. The event was widely covered by national and local media.
Jagoda Szkarłat April 11th, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
September 2014
In September 2014 a group from Australia, including among others a member of Australian parliament, participated in a very intense study program about modern Poland and Polish-Jewish relations organized by the Forum. An important moment of their study trip to Poland was a visit to Wiskitki, where they met with students of one of the schools participating in the School of Dialogue program. The location was chosen intentionally – one of the participants had family roots in Wiskitki. “This is an inspiring evidence of the value that the Forum’s programs provide. Kids were wonderful and teachers very engaged,” she said later.
Jagoda Szkarłat April 7th, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
June 2015
On June 27, 2015, a group of twenty-four friends of Forum for Dialogie flew from the United States and Australia to Poland to take part in a seven-day trip – the first Friends of the Forum study trip to our country. On their way, they also visited Ulanów, where Jerzy Dąbek and Jolanta Nicałek, local Leaders of Dialogue, in cooperation with one of the Friends of the Forum, Cheryl Fishbein whose both parents were from Ulanów, run the Heritage Foundation. The guests visited, among others, Memorial Chamber of Ulanów Jews, where local Leaders also talked about their motivations behind their involvement for the preservation of Jewish heritage. Ulanów also revealed its other face to the group – as the town cultivates its woodrafting tradition; the guests took part in a rafting trip between the San and Tanew rivers.
December 2011
During a study visit that Forum for Dialogue organized at the beginning of December 2011, a group of thirteen representatives of the Jewish community from the U.S, Australia and Israel met junior high school students who had participated in the School of Dialogue program in Ulanów. The students guided their guests, showing them former Jewish sites of their town, which they had discovered while implementing the School of Dialogue program in the spring semester. Both parents of Cheryl Fishbain, who was part of the group, came from Ulanów. This is how she recalls the day:
“This time around it was something very special and thanks to the Forum and the School of Dialogue we really had an opportunity to make a difference in Ulanow.
First of all being there for me was again very emotional but it was a positive experience not only for me but also for others, people, who didn’t really have a personal connection but they had a chance to see what a real shtetl looked like. They had a chance to understand in living color that the shtetl could be a beautiful place, not the black and white and grey that you see in many pictures from before the war, that there are people living in that shtetl who are wonderful and interested and engaged.
The children were involved in this whole process and they were proud to show off of what they found. What was exciting for me is that in their research, not knowing really anything about my family or the Jewish history of the town before, these children found out about the cemetery, about my grandfather’s business and how it was a major, major industry in the town.
The gentleman that collected all of the documents and relics made a place that was just so beautiful and we didn’t want to leave. If we had a few more hours, a few more days to walk around and to get to know people it would have been the best experience. Nobody wanted to get out of there even though we were exhausted and wet and cold and tired it didn’t matter. It was because of the School of Dialogue that opened up the opportunity to speak and communicate and try to understand the other’s experience. That’s what made it such an exciting and positive experience.
The students gave me copies of my parents’ school report cards. The headmistress was emotional, she didn’t want us to leave. Her father and grandfather worked for my grandfather, I knew the Jewish family of her neighbors which she was able to talked to me about, so as we worked through this, as we continued to communicate we were able to move this process forward, and it’s far from over.
I believe in supporting the work of the Forum, I believe in continuing the communications, I believe that we can delve deeper and we will. I truly believe in my heart that such programs as the one of the School of Dialogue and the continuing visiting of Poland by the Jewish community will create a difference, will make a difference.”
Jagoda Szkarłat April 7th, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
July 2016
On Friday, July 22, Facing History and Ourselves Educators held a Shabbat dinner in Szczebrzeszyn with Leaders of Dialogue and Alumni of the School of Dialogue. American teachers were joined for dinner by Małgorzata Piłat and Franciszek Sobczuk from Szczebrzeszyn, Stanisław Kowalczyk from Józefow Biłgorajski and Marek Kołcon from Zamość. They sang, bonded, and welcomed the Shabbath together in what many participants called the highlight of the trip. The next day, the group went on a tour Szczebrzeszyn, which was followed by several hours of Shabbat leasure and later workshops and reflective discussion.
The New Jersey Jewish News published an article that features impressions of Melissa Weiner, a participant in Facing History and Ourselves study trip to Poland, about a Shabbat evening in Szczebrzeszyn. In her moving testimony, she states, “We are forever changed by this simple, restful Shabbat in a little shtetl”.
July 2015
On June 27, 2015, a group of twenty-four friends of Forum for Dialogue flew from the United States and Australia to Poland to take part in a seven-day trip – the first Friends of the Forum study trip to our country. Szczebrzeszyn, with its rich history and equally interesting present times, was part of the program of the visit.
The guests were welcomed by the Leaders of Dialogue from Szczebrzeszyn – Małgorzata Piłat and Kinga Kołodziejczyk, as well as students from Zamoyski School Complex No. 1, School of Dialogue 2012.
Jagoda Szkarłat April 5th, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
February 2016
On February 17th, 2016 students of the Heschel High School NY and students of Słowackiego High School in Kielce visited the School of Dialogue students in Suchedniów. This is what the Heschel’s group lead teacher and Forum’s friend Shmuel Afek wrote to us immediately afterwards:
“First, I would like to congratulate you on organizing a marvelous and extremely meaningful visit to the gimnazjum im. Stanislawa Staszica in Suchedniow. The pupils were extremely well prepared and they presented their work proudly (and – understandably – nervously) giving us a glimpse into Jewish life in their town.
This is obviously due to the quality of the students themselves, the support that they received from the school administration, their teacher Pani Berlinska, but first and foremost to Kasia and Karolina, the educators who worked so hard to make our visit successful. As you know we traveled to Suchedniow with students from the big city of Kielce, who were very impressed by what they saw and learned. What can I say? It was everything I could have hoped for, and having worked with you for the last 3 or 4 years it was a most authentic demonstration of the truly amazing (may I say, unique?) work that you are doing throughout Poland.“
Jagoda Szkarłat April 4th, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
