Anita Rucioch-Gołek
A grant recipient in 2018
A grant recipient in 2018
Scholarship Completion Report
I invited Isabel and Chaim Webber to Zbąszyń, Poland, for a 5-day visit (including arrival and departure days), who during their 3-day stay in Zbąszyń met with representatives of the Zbąszyń community (including seniors and young people from high school) as well as local authorities. Their stay was linked to commemorative events of the 80th anniversary of Polenaktion organized locally.
Between June 13 and 17, Isabella and Chaim Webber visited Zbąszyń at my invitation in search of family traces – a family that nine-year-old Isabella saw for the last time in July 1939. The Webbers now live in Great Britain, Isabella in a small town in Devon, Chaim in London. Isabella’s mother, Cecilia Schneider, née Mancheim, was born in Chrośnica. Her two sisters got married (to Grunberg and Wajman) and lived in Zbąszyń, while Cecylia and her husband left for Düsseldorf where Isabella was born. Unfortunately, in October 1938, like thousands of other Jews of Polish origin, Cecylia Schneider, her daughter and son were deported to Zbąszyń as part of “Polenaktion”. When Cecilia’s sisters found out that she was accommodated with her children in a mill owned by Grzybowski, in very harsh conditions (it was the end of October, and a shelter was quickly organized in an overcrowded mill, without heating), they took her under their roof. 80 years later, Isabella Webber came back to Zbąszyń with her son Chaim.
A group of students associated with the “Zbąszyński Balagan” project, established several years before in Garczyński High School in Zbąszyń as part of the “School of Dialogue” program, found the Webbers family. But it was Józef Jaskulski who connected the Webbers with Zbąszyń when he posted a message on the “Balagan” fanpage saying that he knew someone who knew the family. Now he accompanied the guests for a few days as an interpreter (the Webbers speak only English). This whole story is exceptional and full of surprising coincidences. The visit of the Webber family triggered many people of good will to act, and many good things happened during those few days: for example, there was a fantastic meeting with students from Garczyński High School, organized in cooperation with the historian Magdalena Cieślak. Yet the visit also provoked difficult emotions: during a visit to the Jewish cemetery in Zbąszyń, where no matzevot are left today, or at the railway station, which Mrs. Isabella Webber associated with deportation and later with kinder transport, which saved her life but separated her from her mother and younger brother who stayed in Zbąszyń.
In addition to meetings with people involved in restoring the memory of former inhabitants of Zbąszyń, there were also other events: time for rest and time for discovering contemporary Zbąszyń. It included a boat trip around Błędnie (the guests were welcomed by the mayor of Zbąszyń, Tomasz Kurasiński, who himself took the helm); a ride around the lake in a vintage car – “Warszawa” (big thanks to Mr. Bogdan Haderek, a father of School of Dialogue student, for organizing it).
The guests also saw the results of a project entitled “Jewish Tales”, created during reading and art workshop, presented in the public library on Saturday morning, June 16th. Students made illustrations that will be included in a guidebook to the pre-war Zbąszyń. This guidebook is created as part of a different scholarship for local activities and is also co-financed by Forum for Dialogue.
The exhibition “Israel: Yesterday and Today” was opened on Saturday evening, in the public library in Zbąszyń. The exhibition was organized in cooperation with the Israeli Embassy in Poland. On this occasion, Andrzej Kirmiel, director of the Alf Kowalski Museum of the Międzyrzecz Land, gave a lecture on the beginnings of the State of Israel, Jewish culture and history, as well as on the consequences of anti-Semitism. In his speech, Andrzej Kirmiel stressed the importance of the upcoming 80th anniversary of “Polenaktion”, during which about 17,000 Jews were expelled from Germany to Poland in just a few days of 1938. Most of these Jews were sent to Zbąszyń, which was then mentioned in media reports all over the world. It is worth reminding the inhabitants of Zbąszyń how important this October anniversary is for the common history and for the history of our small homeland. It is worth remembering and marking during different initiatives in the entire Zbąszyń commune.
Project co-financed by the Ledor Wador Foundation.
