Artur Bara

I always thought I was the one to make all the choices. This time, however, this was not the case. I think that the Jewish souls of Biłgoraj had chosen me. I knew very little about Jewish Biłgoraj; after all, I was born in communist Poland. It must have been Bashevis Singer himself who put his own book into my hands.  He sparked my curiosity, and despite the fact that there was no internet at that time, he convinced me to become an explorer. And this is how it all started – I began to explore this extraordinary Jewish world. If you expect that I am an extraordinary person, I will disappoint you. I am the most ordinary person, who is searching, believing, doubting, struggling. There are many of us and we have the power. For the past 15 years or so, I have been working to restore the memory of Jewish co-inhabitants of the city of Biłgoraj. I am the founder of the I. B. Singer Cultural Association in Biłgoraj and one of the initiators of the annual Singer Days Festival, currently organized in cooperation with the NN Theatre in Lublin and the Shalom Foundation in Warsaw.

I initiated cooperation with the city of Afula in Israel and also cultural, commercial and educational exchanges between our cities. I formed the initiative to create monuments commemorating places related to Biłgoraj’s Jews, the construction of the “Wall of Remembrance” and the Singer bench.  I support the restoration of the Synagogue and the Jewish market, which is conducted by the Biłgoraj XXI Foundation. The beginnings were difficult. The subject of the Jews of Biłgoraj was as alien to the town’s residents just as it had been to me when I first embarked on my journey. I must admit that I feel a lot of satisfaction when I see that Christians living in my city got to like the Jews of Biłgoraj and vice versa. There are still many stereotypes, a lot of hypocrisy, and disputes requiring explanation between Poles and Jews. So, there is still a lot of work ahead of us.

Activism