The main goal of this Polish-Israeli project was to develop tolerance and mutual understanding among young people from Poland and Israel through meetings, workshops and artistic activities. The process of getting to know each other was put in an important context of contemporary history of Poland, which included the following past events: the WWII: the extermination of Poles and Jews; the period of the People’s Republic of Poland: the Poznan June 1956, Gdansk 1970 and 1980, the Round Table 1989. With each step we were able to have a dialogue with the past, memory as well as diversity and multiculturalism of our country. In Murowana Goślina, the young people learned about the history of the Jewish Markowicz family. During our visit to Israel, we met a family member and sat at one table to celebrate Shabbat. He told us the story of Survivors in his family and showed a film shot during his first visit to Poland and Murowana Goślina. It was very important for us to meet Shlomo Volkovich, who was born in the east of Poland, in the lands that today belong to Ukraine. He miraculously escaped death in the summer of 1941. He is a witness, a Survivor. He lives with his family in Haifa. When asked about his nationality, he replies that he feels a little bit Polish, Jewish and Ukrainian. Three years ago he visited Hipolit Cegielski Junior High School No. 1 in Murowana Goślina and told his students his traumatic story from the WWII. We met him at the Ghetto Fighters Museum and listened to his moving story. While in Tel Aviv, we paid our respect to the former Prime Minister of Israel – Yitzhak Rabin, a proponent of the Palestinian-Israeli peace, murdered by a madman.
Jakub Niewiński
Murowana Goślina
