Urszula Antosz-Rekucka

For many years I was completely unaware of the subject. It all started during my theology studies in Krakow, in particular when we were studying the Bible. The fascination with the Old Testament caused not only a dream to name my children Rachel and Jacob (he must have loved her very much to wait 14 years for her at the time when we were still on trees or in caves) – today many people see it as a proof of our “Jewishness”, because this dream did come true, although at the time I was not at my “Jewish” stage. This came later. During my studies I lived in different places and one of them was in the district of Kazimierz in Krakow, and so I wrote my MA thesis (no, at that time I was not dealing with the subject. I was writing about pastoral theology and dialogicality of culture, so a dialogue was already appearing…) by typing it in a semi-legally rented room on Józefa Street. It was only then, there, that the culture and history of Jews began to slowly reach me. I walked around Kazimierz, which at the time was dirty and neglected, I took pictures of remaining Hebrew signboards, I went to TSKŻ meetings, not knowing whether – as a Goy – I was allowed, also a little afraid of the legendary Henryk Halkowski, who would look at me with suspicion.

During the bombardments after the outbreak of WWII, my family was hiding in my grandmother’s basement. The neighbors, a Jewish family with a newborn, also came there to find shelter. After a while, my grandmother went milk the cows and bring something to eat. My mother, then 2 years old, started to cry very loudly. To calm the little one down, the lactating Jewish mother put a Christian child to her breast for a moment. So there was no blood in her veins, but milk from a Jewish mother, yes. Maybe it was the milk that resurfaced after years? I am a religion teacher in Technical and IT Secondary School in Mszana Dolna. Before the war it was a high school building My three great “professional” loves are: The Bible, dialogue and merciful love, that is, charitable actions. These are closely connected with each other, because for me they come from Gospel, and “dialogue is another name for love”. (Pope Paul VI). Therefore, in my work – the regular one and in my activism – I try to put emphasis on these matters. They are intertwined, because the Scripture leads to interest in Judaism, and dialogue includes learning about holidays of other religions, and for example during Purim, together with the students we are not only bake hamantashes and read the scroll of Esther, making a lot of noise, but we also organize fundraising for the needy in Ukraine, because the mitzvah for Purim is to help the poor.

I protect the memory of the town’s Jewish residents by reconstructing their stories from recollections of the localss, scraps of documents, and few photographs. I create artistic and historical programs; I go with my students to the Jewish cemetery and memorial sites. I organize commemoration of the crime – the Holocaust in our context means mass executions. We take care of the cemetery and mass graves, the path that Mszana Jews took to their death, and after 4 years of efforts I managed to have it named Holocaust Victims Avenue of Remembrance. Now I am finalizing another initiative: commemorating the site where the synagogue stood with a plaque. I lead the initative to plant the Tree of Remembrance for our Righteous: Stefania and Józef Wacławików, whose story is completely unknown, as well as marking and commemorating two more mass graves in the area of the Jewish cemetery. I have been involved in dialogue and memory projects with my students: “Let’s Bring Memory Back”, “Preserve Memory. History and culture of two nations” (one involves meetings of Polish and Israeli youth; I organized two such meetings in my school), “Faces of dialogue. Young Assisi. Youth for tolerance and peace” – we’ve already participated in four and each time we were rewarded, and twice we were recognized as “project leaders”.

I feel great satisfaction, because I managed to do a lot: in the public space of the town through commemoration and by guarding the memory, in the consciousness of students through educational activities (this is confirmed by questionnaires after meetings with young Israelis). I feel that I actually do less and less in the school space, because for the past 3 years I have been teaching only students of vocational classes, and the work is not the same as in high school, as for example they come to school only on specific week days. But what is most elementary is probably the most important: I take every class to memorial sites, tell the stories, they put stones for a chosen person, they go home changed. During these years of working here (before I worked in Krakow, but not yet in this field), hundreds of young people have gone down this path with me.