| 2018 |
Wołomin
Wacław Nałkowski High School No. 1
Wacław Nałkowski High School No. 1
| 2018 |
Jews would settle in Wołomin, a town in Mazovia region, from the 19th century. The workshops and enterprises they established spurted the town’s growth. In the 1920s, Jewish inhabitants accounted for almost half of all local residents. In December 1939, a ghetto was created in Wołomin; it existed until 1942. When it was liquidated, there were almost no Jews left in the town. Some Jewish residents had been forced to work in the local glassworks. After World War II, a few dozen Jews returned to Wołomin and established the local Jewish committee there.
Few traces of the town’s Jewish life remain to be seen – the synagogue building no longer stands, the Jewish cemetery no longer looks like one, with no tombstones in sight. Noteworthy is the Zofia Nałkowska and Wacław Nałkowski house which is home to a museum; its exhibits include a photograph of Janusz Korczak and publications in Yiddish. This building, family home of Zofia Nałkowska who, among others, wrote about atrocities German-occupied Poland in her short story collection Medallions, was the headquarters of the Judenrat during the ghetto’s existence.
Wołomin’s Wacław Nałkowski High School no. 1 students participated in the School of Dialogue program. They had done a walking tour of the town’s Jewish sites as part of their class curriculum and therefore were not surprised by historical information about their hometown shared with them during the project-planning session. For their School of Dialogue project they decided to create a walking tour through Wołomin in the inter-war period. They searched for information online and in various periodicals. Ultimately, the walking tour had not been conducted, yet project participants nevertheless felt that they had learned something new and gained new experience. Their test walking tour was attended by their peers from another class in the same year as well as their teachers.
France24 website included footage from School of Dialogue workshops in Wołomin in their documentary honoring the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising anniversary.
Students organized a meeting with Tadeusz Kilak, a retired teacher, who told them about prewar Wołomin, with extra focus on the town’s Jewish residents. One female workshop participant declared she had had no prior knowledge of the ghetto’s existence and would petition to have a memorial plaque erected in the town.
School: Wacław Nałkowski High School No. 1
Students: 2nd year humanities class
Teacher: Magdalena Janik
Educators: Anna Desponds, Zuzanna Piechowicz
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.
