Ireneusz Socha

My contacts with Association of Dembitzers in Israel began through a meeting with the association’s head, Mr.Meir Goldman, whom I met while shooting a film about him with cinematographer Piotr Pochwat for Dębica Area Appreciaton Society in 2004. Mr.Goldman was born in Dębica and is a son of Abraham Goldman – Dębica’s last Jewish Kehilla chairman. In 2007 I met a large group of Israeli Dembitzers who came to my town to visit family graves. Among them was Oded Golan, the current head of the association. A year later, I was invited by the association to come to Israel to participate in an annual commemorative event of Dębica’s Jewish community. My speech, in the course of which I discussed my efforts to commemorate Dębica’s Jews, met withsizable interest and ample feedback from the audience.

We developed a preliminary plan for actions aiming to revitalize Dębica’s Newtown Synagogue and to promote the town’s Jewish past among its contemporary residents. The society provided support for my publication of “Book of Dębica” in 2014. Over the past few years, I worked together with the Association to enable negotiations on the topic of revitalization of Dębica synagogue. After years of joint efforts, in July 2016 a groundbreaking meeting took place which led to the joint declaration to work to bring new life into Dębica’s Newtown synagogue: the town mayor was met by representatives of Irgun Yotsey Debica and Tadeusz Jakubowicz, chairman of the board of the Jewish Religious Community in Krakow, who own the building. The project is underway and I hope to remain its active participant.