Sosnowiec
Reconnecting Ties
Reconnecting Ties
June 2016
On June 29, 2016 a group from Jewish Museum of Australia visited participants of a School of Dialogue program in Sosnowiec. After the meeting at school, the students guided the visitors around Jewish sites of their town. The meeting was especially touching as a member of the group from Australia, Mr. Joshua Pila, who was born in Sosnowiec and managed to escape from Sosnowiec ghetto during the war, completed the students’ narrative with stories of his childhood.
May 2014
In May 2014, members of the Facing History and Ourselves delegation, Saul Pannell and Sally Currier visited Sosnowiec, where Mr. Pannell’s family once hailed from. They were hosted by School of Dialogue participants from Stanisław Staszic High School, who organized a walk to see Sosnowiec’s Jewish sites. Later they met with Karolina and Piotr Jakoweńko, Leaders of Dialogue in Zagłębie and Sosnowiec area. Piotr and Karolina told our guests about their involvement in restoring the memory of Jewish community of Zagłębie area.
Jagoda Szkarłat April 4th, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
August 2018
In August 2018, Heidi Urich, Douglas and Janine Cohenz met with the School of Dialogue students. Heidi and Douglas are descendants of Sierpc Jews and committed genealogists who visited Poland as part of the 38th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy – the largest Jewish genealogy conference in the world, which in 2018 was organized in Warsaw.
The guests received a set of materials prepared for them: a detailed map of the pre-war town and documents concerning their families’ history. After a brief meet and greet, the students took the guests on a walking tour of Sierpc Jewish sites they have developed as part of the School of Dialogue program.
The tour included a stop at the house of Abraham Neumann (a painter who studied under Jacek Malczewski), at the rabbi’s house, the place where the synagogue once stood, the former ghetto area and at the cemetery where the participants lit candles.
The guests were very impressed with the involvement of the local community in finding historical information about the visitors’ families. The students surprised them with new information and included into the tour the plots of land where the houses of their ancestors once stood. The guests had the opportunity to compliment these stories with their family tales.
The program is co-financed by Malka and Pinek Krystal Scholarship Fund.
August 2013
On Sunday, August 25, the president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston, USA, Heidi Urich, who traces her roots back to Sierpc (a small town 75 miles from Warsaw) visited, together with her husband, the local School of Dialogue.
Young graduates of the School of Dialogue program in Sierpc and their teachers welcomed their quests and took them for a tour of Jewish sites in their town. They were accompanied by the school principal Rev. Stanisław Zarosa SAC, head of the local documentation center Tomasz Krukowski and school historian Dorota Ossowska who supervised the School of Dialogue program in Sierpc in the fall of 2012.
Heidi found the experience to be moving and emotional, as she said, “A group of Polish middle school students was showing me a building that once housed the Jewish library and another that housed the town rabbi and a Jewish school. They pointed out the site of the handsome wooden synagogue destroyed by the Nazis and the borders of the Jewish ghetto established by the Nazis. At the Jewish cemetery, they lit lanterns they had brought along at a monument to remember victims of the Holocaust. I was impressed with the quality of the tour and with the students’ pride in presenting what they had learned in researching their town’s history. Neither would have been possible without the vision and expertise of the School for Dialogue program.”
In May 2014 Forum for Dialogue organised visits for the representatives of the American organization Facing History and Ourselves in 5 schools that participated in the School of Dialogue program: Błonie, Grójec, Radzymin, Sierpc and Sokołów Podlaski. Forum’s educators ran the “get-to-know each other” workshops and the pupils showed the guests the places in their towns connected with the Jewish heritage.
Jagoda Szkarłat April 4th, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
December 2014
Jewish leaders with strong Polish ties, from the USA, Australia and Israel, took part in a December study visit to Poland. They participated in a number of meetings, which deepened their knowledge about the history of Poland as well as the complicated Polish-Jewish relations. Participants included Mary Slade, barrister from Melbourne, who was born in Łódź just after the war, and Frank Hornstein, an elected member of the Minnesota House of Representatives.
Their meetings mostly took place in Warsaw and Cracow. However, our guests admitted that the most important moment of their trip to Poland was a visit to Sieradz, where they met with students from the local high school, who participated in the School of Dialogue educational program.
It was an extraordinary encounter. Students guided our group to places connected to the history of Sieradz Jews. For students, the most memorable experience was meeting with Mary Slade from Melbourne. Mary is a board member of the Melbourne Jewish Holocaust Centre and she has Polish roots – in addition to being born in Łódź her mother is originally from Sieradz. She told young people from Sieradz a dramatic story about her parents being the last survivors from Łódź ghetto. It was a powerful and extraordinary experience for our students.
At the end of the study trip, our students, with help from the local priest, Marian Bronikowski, planted a tree in the church garden in memory of this exceptional meeting. The attached plaque says: “In memory of the Jewish men and women of Sieradz who throughout the ages built and developed this town together with their Christian neighbors and who were expelled and murdered out of human wickedness.”
Later that day, our study tour guests were so much impressed after the meeting with the students they recorded special thanks for them. Watch the clips by some of the group participants. Some time after the meeting, Mary Slade wrote also her impressions from that meeting.
In December 2014 I was a guest of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs on a group study mission of organized by the Forum for Dialogue. We 6 participants came from USA, Israel and myself from Australia.
At the outset I have to say that my trip was a transformative life experience thanks in large part, to my visit to Sieradz, the town where my mother Mela Groch (Bryn) was born in 1919, which the Forum organizers had arranged especially to surprise me. (I also was born in Lodz Poland after WW2 and migrated to Melbourne Australia with my parents in 1948.)
A vocational High school in Sieradz had agreed to participate in the Forum program to discover the Jewish roots and history of their town. They greeted our group most enthusiastically and were thrilled to meet me as the only daughter of a still living descendant of the town.
The students had conducted extensive research with photos of the cemetery, synagogue and mikvah, all hanging up along the walls of the classroom. Questions and answers flew across the classroom. Our visit was so newsworthy that the local and regional TV radio and media reporters were all waiting for us as we commenced our tour of Sieradz, guided by the students. Walking around the old town and eventually to the site and street of the ghetto was a most moving experience for everyone.
I heard the details about the liquidation of the ghetto and the deportation of the Jews to Chelmno, for the first time. We all cried together as I told the students that my maternal grandmother and my aunts and their children were among those selected, and as we hugged each other in tears, I felt the strong bond between us.
The next surprise was a walk to the local church set in a beautiful large garden. We met the priest who led us to the site in the garden for the planting of a sapling tree of remembrance, which faced the former old synagogue. A commemorative plaque read:
“In memory of the Jewish men and women of Sieradz who throughout the ages built and developed this town together with their Christian neighbours and who were expelled and murdered out of human wickedness. Participants of the School of Dialogue Project and the study tour organized by the Forum for Dialogue December 2014.”
I will never forget this poignant and significant day to witness where once there was hatred and destruction there is now a tree – a symbol of love and tolerance, that will blossom and grow. My profound thanks go to the Forum for Dialogue, and for its outstanding work.
Jagoda Szkarłat April 3rd, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
May 2015
“I was inspired by the new generation of Poles who are reclaiming Polish-Jewish history as part of their own story. They discovered a deeper layer of truth about their village. And then they shared it with me, the first living Jew they have ever met.” So said Rabbi Shoshana Boyd Gelfand in an interview on BBC Radio 2. Rabbi Boyd participated in the Forum’s study trip to Poland, and was speaking about her meeting with School of Dialogue students in Sienno.
Rabbi Boyd was part of a delegation of Jewish community leaders from the United States and Great Britain who at the end of September participated in an intense week-long program prepared by the Forum and devoted to Polish-Jewish relations.
They met with representatives of academia, media, politics and Polish Jewish community, and visited the students in Sienno.
We invite you to listen to Shoshana Boyd Gelfand’ talk on BBC Radio’s Pause for Thought.
Jagoda Szkarłat March 31st, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
September 2019
17 members of Jablon family, descendants of Jews living in Siedlce before the Second World War, visited Warsaw and Siedlce in September 2019. Forum for Dialogue organized and facilitated the meeting with students from the Queen Jadwiga High School in Siedlce, followed by a workshop and a walking tour in the city.
The visit of Jablon family was organized by Zuzanna Rudzinska-Bluszcz, a granddaughter of Zofia Olszakowska, Righteous among the Nations who saved Cypora Jablon’s daughter, Rachel during the Second World War, and Judith Greenberg, New Yorker and cousin of Rachel. Zofia Olszakowska, Cypora Jablon and Irena Zawadzka were school best friends who graduated from Queen Jadwiga School in 1930s. In 1942, Irena and Zofia took on themselves rescuing one year old daughter of their friend Cypora from Siedlce ghetto. Cypora, her husband and other members of Jablon family died during the Holocaust, but Rachel survived in hiding. After the war Rachel left for Israel where she started her own family. She kept in touch with Irena and Zofia and those bonds of friendship persevered and are continued by next generations.
On the morning of September 19th , students from Queen Jadwiga High School filled the auditorium and listened to the history of friendship between two Christian and one Jewish girl which was abruptly ended by the horror of the Second World War, but lived in a biography of Rachel, a child survivor of the Holocaust. Eighty years after the outbreak of the war, families of Zofia and Rachel met with students to talk about intertwined Polish/Jewish history, taking responsibility in darkest of times, and value of friendship and respect. Judith Greenberg and Zuzanna Rudzińska-Bluszcz showed pictures of pre-war Siedlce and Queen Jadwiga school as well as described the post-war connections and histories of Jablon family and its Polish rescuers.
After the plenary session, group of Jablon family coming from United States, Israel, Italy and South America, met with students involved in School of Dialogue program led by Forum for Dialogue. The small, intimate workshop was an occasion to reconnect descendants of Siedlce Jews with teenagers who took upon themselves caring about Jewish history and heritage of their town. After lunch in school cafeteria, students invited guests for a walking tour in Siedlce and showed them traces of pre-war vibrant Jewish life in the city, as well as places connected to Cypora and Jablon story, including the original plot of pre-war Queen Jadwiga School and buildings inhabited by Jablon family before the war. The last stop of the visit was the Jewish cemetery of Siedlce, where a Rabbi and a Catholic priest led an ecumenical prayer in the memory of Siedlce Jews.
Members of Jablon family, re-united especially for this heart-warming visit in Poland, were impressed by the empathy, consideration and knowledge demonstrated by the participants of School of Dialogue program. It was the first time that alumni of School of Dialogue in Siedlce had a chance to meet with Jewish family tracing its roots in their hometown and they showed nothing but kindness, genuine enthusiasm, and willingness to share the knowledge about their town.
May 2015
In May 2015, Forum for Dialogue hosted an Israeli delegation. They participated in an intense trip, during which they visited Warsaw, Siedlce, Łódź, Kraków and the Museum and Memorial Auschwitz-Birkenau. In Siedlce, the group met with students and teachers from the School of Dialogue program, who showed our guests around the town’s Jewish sites. It was especially meaningful for Erez Shani, whose family came from Siedlce. Yael Golan Seligman, a journalist who also took part in the trip, described their experience in the article:
“We were touched to meet young, non-Jewish students involved in the Forum’s school project. They guided us through the streets of their town, Siedlce, and taught us about Jewish history there – the fruit of research and interviews with family members and city elders.
They showed us where the synagogue and Jewish school were located, and even took us to a brick wall they think served as the ghetto’s perimeter fence.
We followed them fascinated, sharing in their excitement, and when I spoke with some of them I could not help but wonder why they even care about this, and why is this possible now? Young women who are members of the third and fourth post-war generation are making history. Gradually I realized how similar everything was, and how much work the third generation faces in reviving the memories and stories of their silent parents and grandparents. This is the last generation that can still turn to those who lived during that critical period with questions.”
Jagoda Szkarłat March 31st, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
November 2013
In the beginning of November 2013, the Forum concluded another visit of Jewish leaders from the United States and Australia to Poland. During an intense week, program participants met with representatives of academia, politics, culture and the Polish Jewish community. One of the most memorable experiences was the visit to a School of Dialogue in Sandomierz. During their meeting with local high school students, our guests discussed their participation in School of Dialogue workshops and were guided by them around the town’s Jewish sites. Michael Gawenda, Australian journalist mentions the meeting with the youth from Sandomierz in his article about the visit to Poland:
“These young people were full of a sort of defiant and boisterous joy, the sort that comes from discovering something that had been hidden from you. Lots of Jews had once lived here! Who were these people?
What’s a Jew anyway? And why did they leave? Later, we walked with them through their town and they took us to the new markers of Jewish life We stood together in front of a moss-covered grave, the lettering on the tombstone long faded.
Later, at the café where we ate local apples and the cakes the kids had baked for us, Agata asked me how come I understood some Polish words. I told her my parents had spoken Polish when I was a child and they didn’t want me to understand what they were saying.
“Where did they come from?” she asked. I told her my mother was from Lodz and my father from a small town called Lowicz. “So you are Polish,’’ she said.
I didn’t know what to say. My parents, whose families lived in Poland for many generations, did not consider themselves to be Polish. For them, Poland was no more than a place of death. It was not just the years of genocide that had embittered them, though those years had coloured – and yes, distorted – their view of Poles and Polish anti-Semitism.
“I guess I am Polish in a way,’’ I said. “Do you think I am Polish?’’ I asked.
“Of course,” she said, and smiled.
In schools across Poland, hundreds of kids are working on projects like the one in Sandomierz. I wondered what would last from these discoveries for these children who once had no inkling that Jews had lived in their towns. Their parents had never spoken to them about the Jews of their town. Neither had their grandparents. The communist regime had been determined to rid Poles of any memory of the country’s Jews. But as I travelled on in Poland, with the kids of Sandomierz somehow accompanying me, I thought that the past cannot be undone but perhaps it can be reclaimed.”
Jagoda Szkarłat March 29th, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
September 2016
We were the first people to observe Shabbat in Rabka-Zdroj since the 1940s. Many of Rabka’s Jews were shipped to nearby death camps, while others were murdered at the SS school for slaughter, which had been established in their town. A group of us from Temple Emanu-El in Providence, Rhode Island, along with friends from New York and Massachusetts, came to spend Shabbat in this picturesque spa town, not knowing its gruesome history. We welcomed Shabbat with participants in the Forum’s Leaders of Dialogue program and their families, along with members of the Forum’s staff. Our Shabbat in Rabka became an unforgettable day of worship and learning, eating and walking, and especially creating new friendships.
Two members of our group were rabbis, who led the chanting of the Friday evening service, and explained the meaning and background of the prayers and the dinner rituals. We lit Shabbat candles, chanted Kiddush over the wine, and gave thanks for the food with the blessing over the challahs. When our children are with us, we bless them at the Shabbat table with the priestly benediction from the Book of Numbers, invoking prayers for God’s protection, favor and peace. We explained this custom to our new friends, Karolina, Narciz and Michal. Karolina and her husband, and Narciz and his wife lovingly blessed their children as we experienced the beauty of this spiritual moment together. We felt a common bond, despite our different religious traditions, languages and backgrounds. The warmth and peacefulness of Shabbat was enriched with an abundance of delicious food. Our friends shared stories they had gathered through their research, which has propelled them to courageously expose the truth about the tragic end of the Jewish community in Rabka. It was a moving evening for all of us.
Shabbat is supposed to be an uplifting time, a time of relaxation, a time to reflect and share good company. It’s a time to be at peace.
On Shabbat morning, Narciz and Michal guided us through town, pointing out locations where Jewish businesses once operated, while bringing to life the powerful stories of what happened to the former owners of the places and their families. They led us into the neighborhood where many of the town’s Jews had lived, and showed us the stairway leading to the site where the synagogue had stood. The stairway had been overgrown and buried for years, but after Narciz and Michal examined old photos of the area, they determined where the stairway must have been. After successful probings, they painstakingly worked for months to uncover the stairway. We were able to ascend the stairs to the empty spot where Rabka’s synagogue once crowned the neighborhood. Narciz then invited us to relax in the garden of his family’s home nearby, which had been the home of the last rabbi in Rabka. We enjoyed homemade plumcake prepared by his wife, along with refreshing drinks, and grapes grown on the vines, which surrounded the garden where we sat. Narciz spoke with tearful emotion, saying how privileged he felt to welcome the children of Abraham to his home. We, his guests, we deeply moved by his words of love and friendship.
After lunch, Michal told us how a local school had been transformed by the SS into an academy for efficient murder, making what some Jews had thought might be a place to evade capture by the Nazis, into a prime location for their target practice. Rabka’s beauty and serenity had been twisted by the invaders. But we felt a sense of comfort and peace with our new friends, and with other residents of Rabka who joined us for our final Shabbat meal and for the Havdalah ceremony, which ended our unforgettable day of hopefulness and peace. The camaraderie and kindness we experienced all through Shabbat made us wonder how different things might have been. We are confident that the future will be brighter, with the Forum’s Leaders of Dialogue helping to show the way forward.
Jagoda Szkarłat March 27th, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
September 2016
One of the highlights of the study trip for Jewish leaders from the U.S., that took place in early September 2016, was a Shabbat dinner held in Rabka Zdrój. Trip participants together with with local Leaders of Dialogue – Narcyz Listkowski, Michał Rapta and Karolina Panz – and their families gathered for a shabbat reflection, sang some prayers, and lit the candles. An evening full of touching moments for all present there.
The next day, they met again to visit Jewish sites of Rabka Zdrój with Narcyz Listkowski and Michał Rapta. The day was concluded with Havdala ceremony attended by the guests from U.S., Leaders of Dialogue and their families and guests from the local community. Rabbi Wayne Franklin, one of the participants of the study trip wrote about hid experience on Shabbat in Rabka:
“We were the first people to observe Shabbat in Rabka-Zdroj since the 1940s. A group of us from Temple Emanu-El in Providence, Rhode Island, along with friends from New York and Massachusetts, came to spend Shabbat in this picturesque spa town, not knowing its gruesome history. We welcomed Shabbat with participants in the Forum’s Leaders of Dialogue program and their families.” 
Read more…
August 2015
During their week-long study trip to Poland in August 2015, organized by Forum for Dialogue in partnership with Polish Embassy in Washington, US teachers and educators collaborating with Facing History and Ourselves visited Rabka-Zdrój. For many a highlight of the trip was a meeting with Leaders of Dialogue Narcyz Listkowski and Michał Rapta in Rabka-Zdrój, who presented their work to preserve the Jewish heritage of their town.
August 2014
In August 2014, Israelis participating in a study visit organized by Forum for Dialogue visited Rabka-Zdrój. They were very moved by the hospitality of Narcyz Listkowski and Michał Rapta, Leaders of Dialogue who work for the preservation of the Jewish heritage in Rabka. Narcyz invited them to his house that used to be a rabbi’s house and a mikveh, and together with Michał, they showed their guests the stairs to the former synagogue, which they had discovered and uncovered.
Jagoda Szkarłat March 27th, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
November 2015
Participants of Forum’s study trip from the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom visited Opoczno in November 2015. There, they met with local high school students, participants of Forum’s School of Dialogue program. After getting to know each other, the students took our group on a walking tour around Jewish sites of the town.
One of the participants – Susan Wolf Turnbull – wrote a thank you note to the students after the meeting: “Thank you for your wonderful hospitality during our visit to Opoczno with the Forum for Dialogue. We were so fortunate to be able to see your town through your descriptions of the Jewish sights that no longer exists as they were.
For centuries our families lived side by side in all of Poland. Your work today and your knowledge of the Jewish community continues this historic relationship. We have faith in your sharing this knowledge with your friends and families to help combat the misinformation and myths about Jews…
Be well and reach high and continue to learn!”
Jagoda Szkarłat March 24th, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
August 2014
In the end of August 2014 we organised a unique meeting. Despite the rain, fog and the fact that the summer holidays were not over, students from Seweryn Goszczyński High School No. 1 in Nowy Targ guided the participants of a study visit from Israel around the sites connected to the local Jewish history of their town. The group hosted by the students included the vice-president of Tel Aviv, town officials, cultural workers, film directors and journalists.
Jagoda Szkarłat March 23rd, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
