The connections made during the Polish/Israeli Leadership Initiative have already bore fruit! One of the participants of the program, Paulina Kieszkowska-Knapik, a Polish lawyer and Friend of the Forum, has been invited by Dov Gil-Har, an Israeli journalist, also a participant, to Israel to speak about the struggle to maintain judiciary independence in Poland. As one of the founders of the Free Courts movement, which fights for the preservation of independence of the Polish justice system, and a vocal supporter of the Solidarity in Truth campaign opposing the amendment to the National Remembrance Act, she is uniqually qualified to address these issues.

Paulina Kieszkowska-Knapik gave her talk at the Ono Academic College in Kiryat Ono, which is among Israel’s fastest growing institutions of higher education. Ono College emphasizes inclusivity, utilizing higher education to foster social integration by way of decreasing economic and cultural gaps in Israeli society.

photo Dov Gil-Har

As a part of a very moving and more intimate part of the visit Paulina met with Simcha Rotem (née Simcha Ratajzer, nom de guerre Kazik), one of the last survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – and Paulina’s personal hero. When she read the incredible story of his life in a book entitled A Hero from the Shadows: Kazik Ratajzer, she realized that he came from the very same neighborhood of Warsaw as she did: Czerniaków, one of the poorer areas of pre-war Warsaw with a distinct local color and culture. When explaining about her connection with Simcha, she said: “He’s a boy from Czerniaków and I’m a girl from Czerniaków. My parents weren’t from Warsaw, so growing up, I decided to consider Kazik’s story a way for me to connect with the neighborhood and the city.” Her attachment to her hero was so strong that she decided to call her son, Kazik, after him. When the trio – Paulina, her son, and Simcha – met in Israel, a lovely conversation in Polish ensued. Paulina’s son presented Simcha with his drawing, to which Simcha responded that Kazik is a really klasa chłopak, “a swell guy.”

Paulina emphasized that those moving moments in Israel wouldn’t be possible without the friendships made during the Polish/Israeli Leadership Initiative. The program’s formula, which involves in-depth conversations and long meaningful meetings, enables the creation of strong bonds of mutual understanding among the participants. Another follow up of the Forum’s latest program is a documentary series that Dov Gil-Har is preparing about the Polish judiciary independence issues.

photo courtesy Paulina Kieszkowska-Knapik