| 2018 |
Rybnik
Nicolaus Copernicus High School No. 4
Nicolaus Copernicus High School No. 4
| 2018 |
In December 2018, Rybnik’s Nicolaus Copernicus High School no.4 students from grade 2b organized a walking tour which was the final element of School of Dialogue workshops. They invited another grade from their year and their beloved janitor to participate in the tour. The tour consisted of a walk combined with storytelling and presentations of prewar photos. The only existing building connected to the history of Jewish Rybnik is the Haase family mansion, owned by well-known local philanthropists that had sponsored a local hospital and established the town’s park.
Another stop on the tour was a square with a fountain which had once been the location of the synagogue and the rabbi’s house. The site is home to Rybnik’s sole commemoration of its Jewish residents: a plaque informing about the synagogue in Polish and Silesian. Students also used these two languages to talk about Jews of Silesia region. They had also prepared description of all sites of their tour in Silesian with the intention of posting them online on websites related to Rybnik.
The tour’s recurring theme were matzevah tombstones, ripped out from the Jewish cemetery by German occupiers during World War II. The cemetery area is now a park, its history forgotten. Germans intended to use the matzevot to pave Brudnioka street. Małgorzata Płoszaj, one of the local residents, had recently managed to move the tombstones to Rybnik’s Regional Museum, which was also included in the tour’s itinerary.
Students invited Ms. Płoszaj to the school as a guest speaker to talk about Judaism and her own research into Jewish culture and history in Rybnik area.
A visit to a chapel devoted to St. Edith Stein, a Jewish philosopher from Wrocław who converted to Catholicism and was murdered in Auschwitz, provided an opportunity to present the many cultures and religions represented in prewar Silesia region as well as the story of the Shoah in relation to Silesian Jews.
School: Nicolaus Copernicus High School No. 4
Students: class IIb
Teacher: Jan Krajczok
Educators: Aneta Ceglarek, Małgorzata Kruszewska
Project cofinanced thanks to the generosity of Friends of the Forum, Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and individual donors and institutions from Poland and abroad supporting Forum for Dialogue.
In appreciation to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) for supporting the School of Dialogue educational program. Through recovering the assets of the victims of the Holocaust, the Claims Conference enables organizations around the world to provide education about the Shoah and to preserve the memory of those who perished.
