Dariusz Walerjański

Everything I am now doing in my life – working as a historian and museum custodian, acting as pro bono caretaker of historic buildings – I owe to the place I was born: a historic building of the beautiful art deco-style City Hall that after World War II was converted into a maternity ward. And to a leap over a cemetery wall during a romantic walk with my girlfriend. It was 1987, I was eighteen and I just discovered a Jewish Atlantis laying beyond the mysterious cemetery wall. It was behind that wall that I kissed my girlfriend for the first time. An unusual site, with incomprehensible inscriptions all around and ivy all over the tombstones and the first kiss that is an event to remember. I suddenly discovered a world I knew almost nothing about apart from the fact that it was a historical remnant of the Jewish inhabitants in the town I call my own who had been forgotten by time and people. Since then, I have been working to save the forgotten Jewish cemetery in Zabrze, documenting and helping others to save from oblivion what remains of the Upper Silesian Jewish world. All in line with the Latin maxim “Conservatio est aeterna creatio”. For years I have been working to preserve the Jewish cemetery in Zabrze. I am responsible for the site’s maintenance and general esthetics, I encourage local schoolchildren to get involved in the cleanup works, which I regularly carry out myself. Once a year I organize a fundraiser and spend the money thus collected on keeping the cemetery clean. I lift the overturned headstones whenever I am physically able to and I provide guided tours of the site for all interested parties, talking about the local Jewish community as well as Jewish tradition and religion. Most of these positive actions I am able to implement only thanks to the invaluable help of other people’s good will, for which I am extremely grateful. I conduct workshops for city guides and tour operators about local Jewish heritage that still remains to be seen. I also publish articles and give presentations on this subject on a regular basis.

I initiate projects aiming to document, preserve and commemorate the surviving Jewish historical building in the Silesian voivodeship. I initiated “Paths and Roots. People and Traditions” meeting series in the Upper Silesian Jews House of Remembrance with individuals who protect, renew, restore and promote the cultural heritage of European Jews. I collaborate with a Brama Cukiermana [Cukierman’s Gate] Foundation on a number of projects aiming to educate and to preserve local Jewish heritage. In my everyday job I work in a technical museum, so each day for me is working towards reconstructing and revealing what had once happened and has been hidden and forgotten since. I search material and spiritual past for that which is worth preserving for posterity. I spend my free time outdoors, listening to music, especially from baroque era, trying to understand the flamboyant and tragic life of Marilyn Monroe and participating in what can be called “treasure” hunts. Is what I do meaningful? I think so, because it all aims to benefit human memory, of which cultural heritage is a part. My actions teach that multiculturalism is not a threat, providing a lesson in respect for others. Reclaiming memory is especially important to descendants of Jews from my town and region. Memory is life. Jews are very grateful for my mission to preserve what for decades had been forgotten and destroyed. Often people thank me for sharing the knowledge on how to behave at a Jewish cemetery or a synagogue and teaching them to recognize the given site’s importance, but most importantly – easing their fear of these places they see as unknown, other or different. My activism fights stereotypes related to the Jewish community; I teach contemporary Poles to explore Jewish themes and in my activism I try to see with the inner eye, or “saper vedere”, as Plato would say. In fact, after all these years of social activism my work is important both to me and to others. As wise people say, every beginning requires you to open a new door. The key to this door is giving and becoming involved.

Activism