Działoszyn
Reconnecting Ties
Reconnecting Ties
June 2016
The authors of the best School of Dialogue 2015 project, students from Wieluń, continue what they started with their project. In June 2016 a resident from nearby Działoszyn, who was hosting guests from Israel, asked them to guide the visitors around Jewish sites of Działoszyn, since the town is not far from Wieluń. It was especially important as the family of one of the members of the group was living in the town before World War II. Kasia Tasarz, student and citizen of Działoszyn, who guided the group said: “It was an amazing experience and I hope that it won’t be the last time for me to show the history of my family town”.
Jagoda Szkarłat March 7th, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
July 2016
Richard Goldman, together with his two adult children, came all the way from Baltimore to Kutno in Poland to visit the town where his family came from and to reconnect with family roots. The Forum helped to organize a meeting in the local library where Richard and his children had a chance to meet with Bożena Gajewska from TPZK (the Association of Friends of Kutno), Magdalena Konczarek, Head of the library in Kutno and local activists to talk and share information about the town and its Jewish past. Now they are planning to work together.
The meeting was very meaningful for everyone, also for us at Forum, as creating these connections is the core of our mission. See the local media coverage of Richard and his family visit to Kutno and hear their impressions from the trip.
October 2011
In the end of October, 2011 the Forum for Dialogue hosted a group of Jewish leaders from the United States. Our guests travelled to Warsaw, Krakow, Oswiecim and Kutno – a former shtetl north of Lodz which used to be an important center for the Jewish community before the war and a home town of the family of one of the participants of the study visit, Irene Pletka.
In Kutno, the participants had an opportunity to meet with Kasprowicz High School students from the Forum’s School of Dialogue program. After a short introductory workshop, invited activists from Kutno described their projects aimed at commemorating the town’s pre-war Jewish inhabitants. Grażyna Baranowska from city’s public library talked about the annual Sholem Asch Festival, while Janusz Pawlak presented his publication depicting the history of local Jewish community. In the end the students guided their American guests through the town’s Jewish sites. The tour started at Kasprowicz High School. Participants went to the city center, where the synagogue once stood, then the Mickiewicza Street and ended at “Konstancja” sugar plant, where the ghetto was located during the World War II. It was an amazing lesson of history.
Jagoda Szkarłat February 23rd, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
December 2016
In December 2016, we held a week-long study visit to Poland for our guests from Israel and the US. After visiting Warsaw, participants continued to Skierniewice, Gliwice, Krakow and Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and Memorial.
On December 9, a Friday evening, the group met in Będzin with Karolina and Piotr Jakoweńko, Dariusz Walerjański, the three participants in our Leaders of Dialogue program, and invited guests to celebrate a Shabbat dinner together. In the premises of a former house of prayer looked after by the Cukerman’s Gate Foundation, they sat together at one table to learn about each other and to connect.
During the discussions with Karolina and Piotr Jakoweńko, and Dariusz Waleriański as well as with other collaborators of the Cukerman’s Gate Foundation, the group could learn about the work on the preservation of the Jewish heritage in Będzin, Zabrze and the area. The conversations lasted until late into the night, and the next day discussions related to the Jewish heritage in the area were continued during a meeting in Gliwice. This meeting was very meaningful for everyone present there.
Jagoda Szkarłat February 23rd, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
April 2013
In April 2013, Forum for Dialogue organized a trip to Kazimierz Dolny for all Polish Alumni of the Polish/Jewish Exchange Program. On the first day of the trip, a meeting was held with students from Municipality School Complex in Kazimierz Dolny who participated in the 2013 School of Dialogue program.
After icebreaker activities, the students invited their guests on a walking tour around Kazimierz sites connected to the Jews of Kazimierz. The tour ended with a quiz testing the participants’ knowledge.
Jagoda Szkarłat February 17th, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
May 2013
On the weekend of May 17-19, 2013, a Shabaton was held in Brok. Shabaton is an integration trip for those involved with Ec Chaim-Progressive Congregation, active within the Jewish Community of Warsaw. Students from Józef Piłsudski School Complex in Brok guided the members of the Ec Chaim synagogue around their hometown.
The walking tour was a journey through the town’s past, and the participants could learn a lot about the history and culture of Jews of Brok. At the end, Rabbi Stas Wojciechowicz, congratulated and thanked the students for their work devoted to the project.
Jagoda Szkarłat February 16th, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
June 2017
In June 2017, George Elbaum, a Holocaust survivor, came to Poland with his wife Mimi, his son Jordan and his daughter-in-law Rebecca. During their stay in Poland, they met with School of Dialogue alumni in the Mazovia region, including students from St. M. Kolbe Junior High School No. 2 in Błonie, where Dorota Berlinska, a local Leader of Dialogue, is a teacher.
Talking to young people about the Holocaust with honesty and sensitivity can be difficult at times.
When reading the book, the students learned that their guest loves sweets – so they baked cups filled with marzipan, supposedly his favorite treat.
We invite you to watch a film from George Elbaum’s meetings in Grójec, Błonie and Mszczonów:
The program is co-financed by Malka and Pinek Krystal Scholarship Fund.
April 2015
On 24 April 2015, students from Junior High School No 2 in Błonie, the winners of the 2013 School of Dialogue, met with a group of twenty-three representatives of the World Presidents Organization and Young Presidents Organization. After short ice-breaker workshops, the youth from Błonie, those participating in the project from the beginning and students who joined the project later, took their guests on a walking tour following the footsteps of Jews of Błonie.
Chaja Łaja, a Jewish girl whose prewar and war history students managed to discover, became a guide around Błonie of the old times. Students showed where the synagogue and other places important for the Jewish community used to stand. They talked about the tragic love story of a religious Jewish girl and a Christian boy, that the pre-war local newspapers wrote at length about. For students who joined the project only recently, it was the first opportunity to act as guides. They managed very well!
May 2014
On Monday 12 May 2014, junior high students from Saint M.M. Kolbe Junior High School in Błonie met a delegation of the Board Members of Facing History and Ourselves, an educational organization from the U.S. This is what Steve Becton from Facing History and Ourselves wrote about the meeting:
“We all needed some hope and inspiration today. I knew it would come with spending the day with students. When we arrived at the school you could just tell how excited and nervous these middle schools kids were. Little did they know so many of us were counting on them to lift out spirits. They did not disappoint. These incredible kids, still learning English, bravely and proudly led us on a tour through their city highlighting significant places that belonged to Jews before the war. What struck me the most is how these Polish Christian kids handled the Jewish narrative with such care, as if they realized that this too was their history.”
Jagoda Szkarłat February 16th, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
November 2015
US teachers from Milwaukee, Michigan who participated in the Fall 2015 Forum-organized study tour to Poland, attended a meeting with students from School Complex in Krzepice who had enrolled in the School of Dialogue program. The meeting began with an ice-breaking workshop, in the course of which the group talked about the students’ final project for the program, as well as their interests and future plans. After making acquaintances with their guests, School of Dialogue graduates took on the role of tour guides and led them through sites relating to Krzepice’s former Jewish community.
In the course of the tour that young guides had prepared during School of Dialogue program, guests were shown, among others, the site of the former synagogue, ruins of a synagogue at Liswarta river, a plaque commemorating Holocaust victims and a historical Jewish cemetery, where one of the female students sang “Avinu Malkeinu” prayer.
To learn more about impressions from Poland, read the following statement written about that day by Sara Minash, one of the participants of the visit to Krzepice:
Sara Minash:
“From Warsaw, on a gray morning we did our way to a little town Krzepice, in which we were told that the student there, with the guidance of the Forum’s educators were studied about the Jewish life in their town till the world war.
Entering the school, tears ran down unexpectedly, probably the normalcy there, on an everyday school day without my cousins that will forever stay young in my mind, took me over.
It didn’t take long and we found ourself following that group of young people in the footsteps of the Jews life in Krzepice. Their detailed knowledge and the personal seriousness touched my heart and the tears were of warmth and hope for a better world.
Little I knew till we arrived in front of the ruins of Krzepice’s synagogue where one of the young girl sang for us in perfect Hebrew, the Yom Kipur’s prayer, Avinu Malkaynu. Avinu Malkaynu we shined before you etc. there wasn’t one dry eye there. How much you have to study to do such choices and what an impact it will have on all of us and me.
On the way to the Jewish cemetery we, the group from Milwaukee picked stones… For no good reason. When we reached the cemetery we were given the stones they prepared for us. I thanked them and the work of the forum, in my name, in the name of my family that survived, the ones that didn’t survived and in the name of the silent people that are buried there and their families that probably didn’t survived. Hoping that after what they studied and did, they will never be indifferent to the suffering of any others.
My father grew up and lived in Kraków, there he belonged to a youth movement Gordonia. The leader of this movement, A. D. Gordon, once said: “The light will not reach a triumph over the darkness as long as we won’t realize the simple truth, instead of fighting the darkness we have to increase and strengthen the light.”
I see in the work of the Forum for Dialogue and its branches that work of increasing the light of knowledge, the only light that can make a change. The Forum brought a beam of light to the darkness I started this journey with. THANKS!”
Jagoda Szkarłat February 14th, 2017
Posted In: EN Meetings
