• Leaders of Dialogue

    A Community of Changemakers

Justyna Biernat, a Leader of Dialogue from Tomaszów Mazowiecki and the moving spirit behind the Spaces of Memory Foundation (Fundacja Pasaże Pamięci), published a critical edition of letters from Tomaszów ghetto. The letters were written by Lutek Orenbach, a local teenager and young artist, who ran an amateur theater in the ghetto. They were addressed to his girlfriend, Edith Blau, whom he met and fell in love with in Bydgoszcz in the 1930s. Their correspondence ended abruptly in the end of 1941, when Edith was deported to the Riga ghetto. Lutek most probably died either during the liquidation of Tomaszów ghetto or in Treblinka death camp.

Their correspondence was preserved by the addressee of the letters, Edith Brandon (née Blau), who survived the war. The collection was deposited at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Justyna’s critical edition includes almost a hundred of letters, as well as Lutek’s sketches: 17 caricatures, 1 self-portrait, and the drawing on the cover of his sketchbook. The Leader supplemented the publication with an extensive introduction concerning the ghetto in Tomaszów and illustrated with archival photographs.