Cleaning works are underway on the grounds of the Jewish cemetery in Dynow. The works are being carried out by the members of the local Town Sport Club “Dynovia” in cooperation with the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland.

 

 

Dynow – Cleaning the undergrowth in the Dynow cemetery

 

 

     We are happy to inform you that a new Jewish calendar for the year 5770 is available at the Foundation’s office. Richly illustrated, the calendar gives the hours of beginning and ending of Shabbat and Festivals for Warsaw, Krakow, Lodz, Wroclaw and Budapest. All interested parties are invited to contact us at [email protected].

 

 

 

 

 

    On July 15, 2009, a ceremony commemorating the Jewish community of Zuromin took place at the local Jewish cemetery on Zeromskiego St. Participating were over 100 guests, among them representatives of the Jewish community, local authorities, descendants of the Jews from Zuromin and inhabitants of the town. The ceremony, related to the recent renovation of the cemetery, was organized by the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland.

 

 

 

 

 

     During the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, on Friday 3 July 2009 a Chanukat HaBayit ceremony took place at the Galicia Jewish Museum to affix mezuzot to the museum entrances. The mezuzot were donated by the Fundusz Michaela H. Traisona dla Polski, and affixed by Michael Traison and Jonathan Webber, Chairman of the Museum’s Board of Trustees. Chief Rabbi of Krakow, Rabbi Boaz Pash, also attended the ceremony.

 

      Construction of a mock Israeli kibbutz began last week in the heart of the Polish capital, Warsaw. The unprecedented art installation is the brainchild of Israeli video artist Yael Bartana and is to serve as the set of the second in her trilogy of films focused on the symbolic revival of Jewish life in Poland after the Holocaust.

 

    While Bartana usually focuses on Israeli-Palestinian issues, the current project uses imagery from the Middle East to address the history of Polish Jews.  “In this film we are concentrating on the moment when Jews are coming actually back to Poland,” Bartana said.

 

    Kibbutzim are collective communities based on agriculture, originally built by Jewish settlers from Europe in the land of Israel in the early 20th century, well before the May 1948 Declaration of Independence by the modern-day state of Israel.

 

     Before the Shoah there were Kibbutzim set up in Poland by Zionist youth groups to train young Jews to work in agriculture, preparing them to move to Israel.

 

    Bartana’s grandparents, as Jewish immigrants to pre-state Israel prior to World War II, had no direct experience of the Holocaust. But the idea for the kibbutz installation arose after a visit to Poland in 2006.

 

    “I went to different cities and communities where Jews used to live and I came up with the idea that it would be really fantastic to revive the Jewish spirit,” she said.