Justyna Biernat

My adventure with the Jewish history of my hometown Tomaszów Mazowiecki is both academic and cultural in character. For the past few years, I have been working on educational-artistic projects that aim to present the town’s multicultural traditions. I learned about the latter as a PhD candidate living in Krakow. Many hours spent on sifting through the archives made me aware of the wealth of information in these collections and – simultaneously – lack of any traces of Jewish presence in the townscape of Tomaszów as well as in regional education. It was important for me to work on this absence in such a way, so that Tomaszów Jews would be included in the urban and Polish narrative. I implemented my first projects devoted to the Jews with the support of local cultural institutions. Sometime later, I decided to create my own space and established Fundacja Pasaże Pamięci (Spaces of Memory Foundation), expanding my research to other cultures that contributed to Tomaszów Mazowiecki; this heritage is the subject of my relentless investigations. I am currently working on publishing letters from Tomaszów’s ghetto written by Lutek Orenbach, a local teenager and young artist who ran an amateur theater in the ghetto. The letters and his caricature portraits were addressed to his beloved Edith. All of the letters are deposited at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washingon, DC, from where I obtained the permission to publish the letters.

For the past few years I have been running the website www.pasazepamieci.pl, where I publish articles about Tomaszów’s Jewish residents. I am active both as an artist and scholar; apart from archival research, my educational activism is of great importance to me. For me, letters from the ghetto are not only a historical source, but also artistic material. Along with a group of School of Dialogue workshop participants, we wrote a drama “Letters from the Ghetto”, which was published by “Arterie” Polish theater quarterly, and then translated into English and sent to Yeshiva University in New York. My dynamics combine those of a scholar and educator. Aside from Jewish literary heritage, I am also interested in Tomaszów’s heritage buildings. I work with my Foundation to fight for maintenance of the dilapidated Jewish cemetery and the former mikveh building. The townscape is important to us, as it erases the memory of Tomaszów’s Jews. I completed a doctoral study program at the Jagiellonian University (Department of Theater and Drama); I live both in Krakow and in Tomaszów, combining my academic and cultural lives. I established the foundation with my sister Karolina Gajek-Szczepanik and our common friend Bartek Sęk.

Activism