* * *: SECOND BIENNIAL CONFERENCE

SECOND BIENNIAL CONFERENCE of PEOPLE PRESERVING JEWISH HERITAGE
in POLAND

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REPORT

Szczekociny, July 5, 2010

When Kamila Klauzinska was awarded a diploma from David Peleg, a former Israeli Ambassador in Poland, for preserving the Jewish heritage in Poland, she met a lot of other volunteers working with the same aim in different Polish cities and towns. She then decided to organize a conference, which would enable these people to meet one another and exchange their experiences, get some support and inspiration and encouragement. The very same ideas accompanied the organization of the Second Biennial Conference of People Preserving Jewish Heritage in Poland, which took place on July 5, 2010 in Szczekociny.

photo (c) Kamila Klauzinska

Szczekociny is a small Polish town half way between Kielce and Katowice and only 15 kilometres from Lelov, a well known origin of Hassidic dynasty tracing its roots to Rabbi Dovid Biderman. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, typically half of its approximate five – thousand – people population was Jewish. These days, also typically, unfortunately, nothing remains of two cemeteries, a synagogue and a mykve and only broken pieces of macevot remind of the forgotten past.

THE CONFERENCE WAS HELD UNDER
THE AUSPICES OF:

Mr. Bogdan Zdrojewski

the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of Poland

Prof. Władysław Bartoszewski

Minister’s Plenipotentiary for the International Dialogue

Zygmunt Rolat

Chairman of the North American Board of the Museum of Polish Jews in Warsaw,

New York

Bogusław Śmigielski

Marshal of Silesian Voivodeship

Ryszard Mach

Starost of Zawiercie Region

The passion for bringing the memory of the Jewish history back to the town is what Agnieszka Piskiewicz shares with Klauzinska. These two were put together by Menachem Daum-a New York documental film maker, whose father’s roots go back to Zdunska Wola, the hometown of Klauzinska and a place of the First Biennial Conference, which took place on September 15-16, 2008. Piskiewicz came to present the important steps taken by local Secondary School teachers, Miroslaw Skrzypczyk and Anna Wieczorek, and a son of the local Holocaust survivor, Yossi Bornstein, who over the last years has become a heart-felt citizen of his ancestors’ town. During this year’s Conference, they could boast of their achievements: three annual Festivals of Jewish Culture, a commemorative plaque on the building of the synagogue, which at present holds a restaurant and a shop, a fence and a commemorative plaque on the old Jewish cemetery, and a growing collection of books of the history of local Jews. So far, there is B-94 The Spirit of the Survivor on the life of Yossi’s father, Izyk Mendel Bornstein

(available at http://www.amazon.com/B-94-Spirit-Survivor-Agnieszka-Piskiewicz/dp/1439239983),

After Survival by Leon Zelman, founder of Jewish Welcome Service Vienna and Judische Echo, whose daughter came to the town for the first time this year, Szczekociny Jews: People, Places, Memory and the local Yizkor Buch translated into Polish, released only a few months before, and handed in to each participant of the Conference: Pinkes Szczekocin.

Menachem Daum, who came to Szczekociny to meet the volunteers also in connection with his new movie,

is especially interested in the figure of Szymon Modrzejewski, who for the last twenty five years has been leading the group Magurycz, a group of volunteers taking care of abandoned cemeteries in Poland, Jewish ones included: http://www.magurycz.org/

He visited the group after the Conference, which gave birth to the following short footage:

Modrzejewski had stopped his works for two days, leaving his group to continue and came to participate in the Conference. One of the fruits to come of it is an expected and agreed work of Szymon’s group on the restoration of Szczekociny’s Jewish gravestones that are waiting on the local yard before their supposed coming back to the cemetery land in the next years.

Among others to give their presentations in the Conference was Leszek Sikorski, a priest involved in organization in Bodzentyn the annual Days of David Rubinstein, a small Jewish boy murdered during the war, whose diary was found and published after the war. The priest organized also cleaning of the local Jewish cemetery, and his prayers and care for the dead always embrace also Polish Jews.

Karolina and Piotr Jakowenko spoke of their Association Brama Cukermana, a successful initiative of restoring the wall paintings in the Jewish house of prayers in Bedzin: http://www.bramacukermana.com/

Daniel Przygoda from Uptown Foundation presented the new project for volunteers of all Polish towns and cities: The Instruction of a Maceva’s Comeback, which encourages local populations to bring the Jewish gravestones out of fields and yards, so that they can be taken care of: http://uptownfoundation.org/projects-macewy.php

Adam and Michal Lorenc spoke of Spotkanie Rymanow, and the Days of Remembering the Jewish Population of Rymanow. This event brings together those who live in Rymanow now and those who used to live there before the war, and now come from Israel with their children and grandchildren to pray together during Shabbat in a well preserved synagogue: http://www.spotkanierymanow.com.pl/

Grzegorz Kamiński spoke of his work on preserving the Jewish cemeteries in Toszek and Wielowieś. http://katowice.gazeta.pl/katowice/1,35055,2398608.html

Grzegorz Kołacz from The Museum of the History of the Polish Jews presented the project Virtual Shtetl, rebuilding the prewar shtetl life on the websites: http://www.sztetl.org.pl/

All of the participants were welcomed by the Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich

and Zygmunt Rolat, a Holocaust survivor from Czestochowa, Chairman of the North American Board of the Museum of Polish Jews and a philanthropist who help financially the organization of the Conference.