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"Risking their own Lifes- Polish people, who were saving Jews during the extermination”.

This event combines the exhibition by Joanna Król and Klara Jackl and a story of Adolf Kiszło from Jatwieź Duża, who during the Second World War, saved a Jew Simcha Lazard, by hiding him in his barn.

We will read parts of Lazard’s report, written in 1947 in Mexico, and we will hear songs on Jewish theme performed by Katarzyna Chlebińska

About the exhibition:

"Risking their own Lifes- Polish people, who were saving Jews during the extermination” is a travelling exhibition.

It concerns people, who were helping the oppressed Jews during the Second World War. It was prepared by POLIN,  the Museum of the History of Polish Jews and the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Polish people, direct witnesses of Extermination, though brought themselves under the violent terror of war, were simultaneously confronted with the cruelty of extermination of Jews－ their neighbours. The morality of Polish people was put to the test. The majority remained indifferent to the Extermination. There were also those collaborating with Germans, harassing and giving up Jews, who were hiding. Few decided to give the Jews help. It was forbidden on pain of death in the occupied Poland. Those who decided to help, had to operate in extremely difficult conditions, in conspiracy, with constant fear, even of their own neighbours. Deciding to help, they knew they might share a fate of those whom they helped. Thanks to their heroism, thousands of Jews were saved in Poland.

The exhibition shows saving the Jews in a broader context. Particular panels discuss German occupation of Poland, the division of the cities into ghettos and ‘the Aryan side’, and sanctions for helping Jews. It shows what motivated the people to help, the Polish Underground, the Government in Exile, and also nuns and priests’ activity in order to help the Jews.

But the most important theme is the respectable fates of Polish helpers, mostly those awarded with The Righteous among the Nations title by Yad Vashem Institute. Their faces, stories and biographies, evidenced on man’s greatness but also villainy during the war.

The exhibition discusses also the presence of the Righteous in the modern polish public discourse. Since 1989, almost thirty years, Poland is continuing to restore the memory of Polish Jews. At the same time polish-jewish relations during the Second World War are analysed. It is currently discussed, whether Polish people did as much as they could to help the Jews and to inform the world about the extermination. The exhibition used the priceless collection of over 400 interviews with the last polish Righteous among the Nations, the Extermination survivors, collected by POLIN since 2007 under the project “Polish Righteous- Recalling Forgotten History”. Those stories are published at www.sprawiedliwi.org.pl.

The exhibition, thanks to the collaboration with many diplomatic missions, is translated into English, Bulgarian, Chinese, German, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian, Italian, Hungarian and Lithuanian, and for five years has been travelling the world and Europe. First display took place at UNESCO headquarter in Paris in 2013. So far it was displayed also in New York, Havana, Melbourne, Shanghai, Moscow, Madrid, Berlin,Vilnius and Warsaw.