Anita Rucioch-Gołek

Both websites – blog and fanpage – stem from the students’ project entitled “Zbąszyń Balagan”. Apart from the walking tours, other activities of Zbąszyń Balagan group through School of Dialogue program include graffiti in the town’s public pace, a blog and a Facebook fanpage, sticker art distributed by students in different parts of Poland, media reports and visit of foreign guests who wanted to experience the “Balagan” for themselves.

We met with students of Eastern Europe Studies at Free University in Berlin (Freie Universität Berlin, Osteuropa-Institut). A group of 21 students and two faculty members visited School Complex No 1 to learn more about the school’s involvement in nationwide School of Dialogue program. The academic supervisor of the group was Prof. Dr. Gertruda Pickhan, one of the co-authors of the publication “Next year in Jerusalem” whose research focuses on the history of Eastern Europe and is. 

Artist and regional scholar Wojciech Olejniczak, who chairs the Tres foundation and has provided support for Balagan project a number of times, was the initiator of the meeting.

We had the unique opportunity of hosting Mr. Manfred Lindbaum and his family. Manfred arrived in Zbąszyń in 1938 along with thousands of other Jews who had been deported here. He lived here temporarily in the mill run by Grzybowski brothers. After 76 years, he and his family visited sites connected to those times and thus offering Zbąszyń Balagan participants the opportunity to meet him in person.