October 28 is the anniversary of the Polenaktion. In 1938, Nazi authorities ordered explulsion of the Jews with Polish origins from Germany to Poland. Within only a few days, almost 17 000 people were deported from the Third Reich to the Polish-German border. Refugees were then accommodated in the crossborder town of Zbąszyń. Each year, Anita Rucioch-Gołek, a Leader of Dialogue from Zbąszyń and a principal of the Arkady Fiedler Primary School, makes an effort to commemorate, together with her students, the anniversary of these historical events that have permanently defined the identity of the town.
Last year, Anita Rucioch-Gołek received Forum for Dialogue’s grant for a project permanently commemorating Jewish community of Zbąszyń that was meant to end this year on the anniversary of the Polenaktion. As a main part of the project, Anita’s students created, together with an artist Paulina Wyrt, a time-lapse cartoon movie. The video presents pre-war Zbąszyń, focusing on a story of four Jewish families that lived in town before the war: the Grunbergs, the Wajmans, the Mannheims, and the Grzybowskis, whose members were shop-keepers and artisans in Zbąszyń. To create the movie, students used photopgraphs and archival documents provided by Isabel Weber, a Holocaust survivor deported to Zbąszyń in 1938. In 2018 she visited the town for the first time since the end of the war. The official premiere of the movie was originally scheduled for the 62nd anniversary of the Polenaktion; students planned to invite the descendants of Jews from Zbąszyń living abroad for that event. Unfortunately, due to the global pandemic they were forced to postpone the meeting.
Despite the obstacles, they managed to organize another important event. Thanks to collaboration between the Zbąszyński Balagan (The Zbąszyń Mess) group created by Anita Rucioch-Gołek, the TRES Foundation and Mr. Józef Jaskulski, a smaller commemoration of the local Jewish residents took place that day. During the event, eleven Stolpersteine, commemorative stumbling stones embedded in the pavement, were unveiled in the proximity of the houses where local Jewish families used to live. Thanks to a live transmission of the event, two descendants of the Mannheim family, Isabel and Christopher Weber, watched the ceremony online.
