Anna Włodek

Each September, my high school’s freshmen are taken on a walking tour. Older students who are involved in the Multicultural Dialogue Club often assist me in the guiding. In each 30-odd freshmen group, maybe 3 or 4 students are aware that there was a Jewish community in Tarnowskie Góry before World War II. We visit the Jewish cemetery and sites where the synagogue and mikveh once stood, looking for traces of Jewish presence still left in the townscape that remain “invisible” to an untrained eye. The visit to the ruined Jewish cemetery  and former pre-funeral house  is a powerful experience for my students. Each year, answers to the question about reasons for the site’s current condition lead us to reflections on our shared past and the contemporary memory.

These walking tours also provide us with an opportunity to impart some of the knowledge to the town’s residents. The square where the synagogue once stood is a bustling place; a vegetable market is located right next to the modest monument commemorating the site. Talking about the synagogue and looking at its prewar photographs, we enter as a large group into the bazaar, causing some “fuss”. Every year, a few passersby stop to listen to the history of the town’s synagogue. For a moment, the past returns to the present.