Sławatycze
School Complex in Sławatycze
School Complex in Sławatycze
– I wish that I could have been the proverbial “Fly on the wall” (a Fly that understood Polish) when educators worked with the students. I would have loved to have listened to the discussions, comments, questions, and observations that emanated from that week. The real results of course won’t be known for years or even decades – wrote to the Forum for Dialogue Alan Metnick, a descendant of Jews from Sławatycze, who visited School of Dialogue workshops in his family town. And he continued: I was encouraged, impressed, and moved by the experience. Bringing the program east to Sławatycze has fulfilled a dream of mine.
Alan Metnick visited students in Sławatycze just when they started their workshops. During first workshop they just had explored Jewish calendar and festivals, learning about customs. This week Rosh Hashanah was approaching, so Mr. Metnick explained to them how his family gathered for the festival, and he avoided listening to his aunts telling stories about the “old country”, which he now regrets. Still, he told them stories about Sławatycze that he had heard from his family.
Students went with him to the cemetery and the meeting made a great impression on them. Being inspired by his suggestion to talk to people who still remember Jewish Sławatycze as they will be gone soon, directly after the first workshop the students began interviewing their families. After the war, out of the handful of Jews who had survived, only Welwel Grynszpan went back to Sławatycze – and was murdered in 1945.
Sławatycze is a small town close to the Belarussian border, half an hour from Terespol, one hour from Brest and five from Minsk. Right before the war there were 1,541 Jews in Sławatycze. Some of them managed to leave and emigrated to the United States or Argentina, looking for work and fleeing from antisemitism, while others followed the retreating Soviet Army. From those who decided to stay, only a few survived. Most were murdered in Treblinka, shot in Sławaycze, or killed in the Łomazy ghetto, where the Jews from Sławatycze were resettled on June 13, 1942. Those who tried to escape from the transport were killed on the spot. Now they lie in the Jewish cemetery. Jewish houses were demolished. Sznajderman’s, Feldman’s and Korenblum’s prayer houses are now gone. The synagogue was burned down in January 1940. The mikveh, which was located at the back of the tempel, on the side of the river Bug, most probably burned at the same time. The Jewish cemetery is located close to the Catholic graveyard, on Polna street. Plundered and deteriorating for years, now it is fenced. A commemorative plaque was unveiled and some matzevot were found at people’s homes and brought back to the cemetery – now there are three of them. The online matzevot register lists some of the names, but only a handful. It is not even known who exactly lies there. One does not hear loud prayers any more, either.
For a couple of days in the fall, students from Sławatycze junior high school learned about the Jewish history of their town and tried to find its traces, material or otherwise.
They confronted stereotypes and verified stories they had heard: about Jewish swindles and about matzoh made with Christian blood. Completely of their own accord, the students met with Ms. Wasilewska, daughter of people who hid Jews during the war, thus helping them survive. They interviewed her and recorded the conversation. They asked around. Members of their families and local inhabitants. Because from what they have heard, things used to be different here, different from now.
The students divided into groups and prepared different parts of the final walking tour, with the help of their history teacher, Ms. Buczek. They also did research in the library and used the stories they gathered. The teenagers managed to recreate the map of pre-war Sławatycze, thus saving the now non-existent Jewish community from oblivion. They brought back memories of two Jewish oil mills, the flour mill, the mikveh, the synagogue and many others. They reminded the participants that Jews used to live there once. That the cemetery is overgrown and that maybe somebody should do something about it. They spoke up, as if they had known that this is a place where one should speak up.
Students from other grades were invited to the tour following the traces of Jews from Sławatycze. The group was taken to a hill, where during the war Germans shot dead older and sick Jewish inhabitants of the town.
Next, they went to the market place, where before the war most shops were owned by Jews, and they visited the building of today’s fire service, where the former synagogue was located. Next to this building there used to be an oil mill and a cheder. Behind the synagogue there was a mikveh and a slaughterhouse was located nearby. Opposite the market place there was a bike rental. Students also showed their colleagues the place of the former brewery, post office and Epelbaum’s mill and told them that Epelbaum was the richest man in the town and the only one that had electricity. In the place of today’s market place there used to be a ghetto. The last place visited by the group was the Jewish cemetery.
Students became very interested in the cemetery, enclosed but covered with tall bushes and plants. They really wanted to clean it (in particular after meeting their special guest at the first workshop), but the cemetery was in such a bad condition that they did not manage to do it. After their visit to the Jewish cemetery, where there had been two gravestones, there appeared the third one! No one knows who brought it here, but maybe someone was inspired by the tour. On November 1st, on which Christians reminisce over their deceased relatives and visit graves in Poland, one could see a few candles burning also at the Jewish cemetery – a symbolic commemoration of the no-longer-forgotten Jews of Sławatycze.
School:
J.I. Kraszewski Junior High School
Students:
3rd year junior high students
Teacher:
Jolanta Buczek
Educators:
Magda Maślak, Izabela Meyza,
School of Dialogue program in Sławatycze was made possible by the support from THE SLAWATYCZE LANDSMANNSCHAFT.
In appreciation to Friends of the Forum for supporting the School of Dialogue educational program.
