In 2013, I participated in School of Dialogue with my students. A group of active and creative students was quickly formed, the workshops were a great success. However, we then faced a great challenge – our town used to have a sizable Jewish community that had since been forgotten. There were no sites or material evidence of their presence that could help us work on restoring the memory of Błonie’s Jews. So our group focused on people.
We attended an extremely interesting meeting with Mr. Jerzy Oziemski, who recounted his childhood memories for us. Both he and his family had extensive contacts with Błonie’s Jewish residents. He also shared with us memoirs of a Jewish girl from Błonie, who survived the Holocaust, that had been translated from the English. He admitted that he might have even known her, since they were similar in age when the war broke out… The girl’s name was Chaja Łaja Szpajsendler and her story became our project’s leitmotif. We decided to walk through Błonie in her shoes, hence the title of our project.
Students would meet with different eyewitnesses, register their testimonies and reminiscences. Meetings with Ms. Alicja Kwiatkowska and Mr. Władysław Tyll were especially rewarding. A few people contacted us with invaluable information when they learned that some school students are seeking traces of Jews in Błonie. This was important to us, as it showed that we are not the only ones interested in reclaiming local memory of Błonie’s Jews.
