Silence… Muteness…Absence… These words strike you when you get involved in issues connected with remembering the people who created the bygone world of Radom and Poland. Silence struck me when I stepped out of the school I work for, and after walking for about 50 meters I saw a building with a plaque commemorating the pre-war “Friends of Knowledge Society” Secondary School. The absolute silence of this downtown tenement house reigned supreme. The contrast between the Polish and the Jewish school was dramatic. If it wasn’t for the plaque, placed by former students of the school, no one walking down the Kiliński street would have known that this school ever existed there. It appeared to me that the place must be revitalized, that we must have the buzz of students’ voices, shouts of middle-school kids fooling around, poured back into this silent yard. Sometime later, as I was passing by the plaque with my colleague, a history teacher, IwonaGrześkiewicz, I shared with her my idea. With her know-how and expertise we could attempt to conduct research of historical sources. We began with sifting through documents in Radom’s city archives. And this was when we were struck by the LACK of documents connected with the Jewish society of Radom. The few documents that survived were written in Yiddish. We felt the burden of our lack of necessary language skills, we also realized that we lack knowledge about the culture, religion and everyday life of Jewish people. Luckily, in 2005,relevant books were available on the market so we knew we had to learn fast. This is how the “I am…” project was born. It focuses on the awareness of citizens of Radom about the history and culture of the Radom Jews.To learn more about the project, visit our dedicated website at www.gimnazjum.website.pl
Zbigniew Wieczorek
Radom
