Commemoration program - accompanying events - The Marek Edelman Dialogue Center in Łódź

Accompanying events

22.08.2022 (Monday)

5.00 PM – Opening of the temporary outdoor exhibition “They Were Neighbors. Human Choices and Behavior in the Face of the Holocaust”, prepared by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum [PL]

Organisers: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Museum of the Independence Traditions in Łódź
Venue: Museum of the Independence Traditions in Łódź – the Radegast Station Branch | 12. Pamięci Ofiar Litzmannstadt Getto Av.

The exhibition prepared by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and presented in Łódź in cooperation with the Museum of the Independence Traditions, examines some of the critical questions concerning the Holocaust.
How did the Holocaust happen? What role did ordinary people play? What was the reason for their compliance with the persecution of Jews? Why did so few help the victims? What spurred others to help and what drove those who engaged in violence against the Jews?

6.00 PM – Panel discussion about the exhibition [PL]

The discussion with experts will aim to analyse the choices made by people in the face of war and the Holocaust. It is also an opportunity to discuss the challenges we face today amidst armed conflict and the extermination of civilians.

27.08.2022 (Saturday)

9.00 PM – Havdalah – official closing ceremony of Shabbat [PL]

Organiser: Jewish Community of Łódź
Venue: Jewish Community of Łódź | 18. Pomorska St.

Havdalah (Hebrew for “separation”) is a ritual celebrated on Saturday evening, particularly emphasising the uniqueness of the holiday – Shabbat, before the weekday and a new week begins.
The Shabbat in the Jewish religion is the most important holiday celebrated to commemorate the creation of the world described in the Bible and the seventh day of the week established by the Creator God as a day of rest – the Shabbat. It lasts from the appearance of the first stars after sunset on Friday until sunset on Saturday.
The Jewish Community of Łódź invites you to a Shabbat farewell ceremony led by the Rabbi of Łódź, Dawid Szychowski, and to a discussion about Jewish tradition.

28.08.2022 (Sunday) Survivors’ Day

10.00 AM – A walk through the Jewish Cemetery with the Rabbi of Łódź, Dawid Szychowski [PL]

Venue: The Jewish Cemetery | entrance from Zmienna St.

Dawid Szychowski, the Rabbi of the Jewish Community, will guide a tour around the ne-cropolis of the Łódź Jews, talking about burial traditions and the most important rules followed by religious Jews after the death of their loved ones. He will also discuss the specific nature of the cemetery. It will also be an opportunity to talk about the important people buried in the Łódź necropolis, also in the so-called Ghetto Field, where approximately 43,00 people were buried in the years 1940-1944.

1.00 PM – “Łódź for Peace” – bicycle ride [PL/UA]

Organisers: Marek Edelman Dialogue Center, Jewish Community of Łódź, Foundation Normal City “Fenomen”
Start: Schiller Pasage | 110. Piotrkowska St.

Marek Edelman Dialogue Center, together with the Jewish Community of Łódź and the Foundation Normal City “Fenomen,” invite you to a bicycle ride “Łódź dla Pokoju” / “Łódź for Peace”.

Let us show together that we are against wars and aggression, and that we are united by the idea of peace. Take the flags and important symbols with you, and let us ride together on bicycles through Piotrkowska Street and Łódź Parks to the Dialogue Center. During the bike ride, the people will be people representing minority groups and people involved in helping during the war in Ukraine.

The event will be translated into Ukrainian.

Whole families, people of different cultures, nationalities and religions are invited!

The ride will end in the Survivors' Park, where further events related to the 78th Anniversary of the Liquidation of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto will take place.

3.00 PM – Meeting with Zofia Lubińska-Rosset, a Survivor, about the book “Crumbs of Memory”, the opening of the exhibition “Fragments of Memory” and handing over certificates of memory trees in the Survivors' Park [PL]

Venue: Marek Edelman Dialogue Center in Łódź | 83. Wojska Polskiego St.

“Crumbs of Memory” is the memoir of a Holocaust Survivor – Zofia Lubińska-Rosset. Her story of life and the cruelty of World War II is the next publication in the Dialogue Center Library series. The author talks about her childhood, her family, the ghetto, and the Great Szpera, which she survived. After the war, she became a paediatrician and spent her whole life helping the youngest.
The book’s initiator was the Dialogue Center’s patron, Marek Edelman – a neighbour of the Rosset family. “It was he who explained to me the importance of talking about the war and the Holocaust,” she recalls. After many years, Zofia Lubińska-Rosset, persuaded by her sons and grandchildren, decided to tell her story.

5.00 PM – “To forget the sorrow…” – a concert for the Survivors performed by Urszula Kryger and a string quartet [PL]

Organisers: Jewish Community of Łódź, Marek Edelman Dialogue Center, Museum of the City of Łódź
Venue: Museum of the City of Łódź | 15. Ogrodowa St.
Admission by invitation and tickets available at the box office of the Museum of the City of Łódź: 12 PLN (discounted ticket), 18 PLN (standard ticket)

The Concert for the Survivors will be performed by Urszula Kryger and a string quartet. Urszula Kryger is a Polish singer and pianist, arts professor, and mezzo-soprano lyric singer. Her artistic activity focuses on chamber music and vocal lyricism, as well as cantata-oratorio repertoire. She is a multiple nominee and multiple winner of the “Fryderyk” awards of the Polish music industry.
As part of the celebrations, the artist and her string quartet will perform a special programme, including compositions by Dawid Bajgelman – a Łódź musician, author of unforgettable melodies from the time of the Holocaust, who died in the spring of 1945.

Performers:
Urszula Kryger - mezzo-soprano
Neuma String Quartett
Maciej Zaforemski - piano

String Quartet:
Nela Zaforemska - 1st violin
Michał Nowak - 2nd violin
Alicja Guściora - viola
Agata Nowak – cello

30.08.2022 (Tuesday)

5.00 PM - “We are one piece of longing. On the trail of Jewish women in the Łódź ghetto” – a walk with the Łódź Women’s Heritage Trail Foundation [PL]

Moderating: Ewa Kamińska-Bużałek, Izabela Olejnik
Start: in front of Bałucki Rynek on Zgierska St.

They painted their lips to look healthy and able to work, and thus avoid deportation from the Ghetto. They wrote poems and journals, even though pencil were so difficult to find. They fought for their survival and the survival of their children.

Let us take a walk in the footsteps of Jewish women of the Łódź Ghetto with the Łódź Wom-en's Route. We will tell the story of pre-war female artists and writers imprisoned in Litz-mannstadt Ghetto, women who were brought to Łódź - a city which was strange to them - during the occupation and placed in the Ghetto, and the problems and hardships which they had to face.

Walking around the area of the former Łódź Ghetto we will present their profiles and show places which are related to them. We will give the floor to, among others, Chava Resenfarb, Ester Daum and Rywka Lipszyc, reading excerpts from their works referring to Łódź.

6.00 PM – “CAFÉ ZELIG”, directed by Tanja Cummings, Germany 2020 – premiere screening and meeting with the director and people featured in the film [PL/ENG]

Venue: Marek Edelman Dialogue Center in Łódź | 83. Wojska Polskiego St.

Some of the world’s last remaining Holocaust survivors with roots from all over Europe meet every week at Café Zelig in Munich, Germany. They get together to laugh and celebrate holidays, to argue and discuss various topics, but they also hold moments of silence and mourning. Some of them, and some of their children, undertake a journey into their past, back to their old home country Poland. And they talk about the difficulties they had, and still have, finding their way back to life.

31.08.2022 (Wednesday)

5.00 PM – Presentation of the new guide to Jewish Łódź with the participation of the authors and publisher [PL]

Organiser: The Taube Center for Jewish Life & Learning
Venue: Marek Edelman Dialogue Center in Łódź | 83. Wojska Polskiego St.

The Field Guide to Jewish Łódź, first published in 2017 by the Taube Center, in partnership with the Libitzky Family Foundation and the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture, offers a comprehensive description of important landmarks of Jewish Łódź and the context in which to view and understand them. A second, updated and expanded edition is under way, with the generous support of Riva Berelson and Sam and Tzipi Tramiel, will be launced launch on August, 30, 2022. Four detailed walking tours of the city with the fifth guiding through locations around Łódź, are accompanied by street maps and detailed descriptions, and are interlaced with provocative discussion questions that add another dimension to visitors' exploration. Numerous sidebars illuminate specific topics such as the Baigelman family musical dynasty; the rich and diverse history of the city's film, theater, and art; the history of the Łódź Ghetto; and the modern-day search for traces of mezuzot. To set the larger context, the Field Guide, like the other publications in the series. is bookended with an introduction to the thousand-year history of Jewish life in Poland.

6.00 PM – Screening of the film “Great Szpera”, directed by Piotr Weychert, Piotr Perz [PL/ENG]

Venue: Marek Edelman Dialogue Center in Łódź | 83. Wojska Polskiego St.

The film features the accounts of survivors, who recall the worsening living conditions in the ghetto, work beyond human endurance, death from starvation and emaciation. It focuses on an unprecedented event in the ghetto history: the Great Szpera. In his speech of September 4, 1942, Chaim Mordechaj Rumkowski, the Elder of the Jews, announced that the Nazis had ordered the deportation 24,000 inhabitants of the ghetto, including small children. Rumkowski appealed to the ghetto inmates to give their children voluntarily. Eventually, 20,000 'unproductive' persons (children under the age of 10, the ill and people over the age of 60) were deported. Their deportation was a harbinger of what was to come: a mass extermination in death camps.

01.09.2022 (Thursday)

6.00 PM – Lecture by Andrzej Grzegorczyk – the custodian of the Museum of the Independence Traditions in Łódź about the Great Szpera [PL] and the screening of the film “The Fate of Łódź. Great Szpera 1942”, produced by Jacek Wawrzynkiewicz, directed by Mikołaj Szczęsny, 10’ [PL/ENG, translation into Polish Sign Language]

Organiser: Museum of the Independence Traditions in Łódź
Venue: Marek Edelman Dialogue Center in Łódź | 83. Wojska Polskiego St.

The Great Szpera was a landmark event in the history of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto and, to this day, remains one of the most tragic memories of its prisoners. This film reconstructs the course of events based on photographs and archival documents, and memoirs. The documentary is part of the series “The Fate of Łódź”, produced by the Museum of the Independence Traditions in Łódź, which presents the most important events and places in the history of the city of Łódź.

02.09.2022 (Friday)

6.00 PM – Meeting with a Survivor of the Łódź Ghetto – Leon Weintraub, and the screening of a documentary “Leon – the Boy Who Survived Hell” – by Jacek Tokarczyk, produced by TVP3 Łódź for TVP Historia, July 2021, 13’) [PL/ENG]

Moderator: Jacek Tokarczyk
Venue: Marek Edelman Dialogue Center in Łódź | 83. Wojska Polskiego St.

Leon Weintraub is 96 years old. He is one of the last remaining “Lodzermensch”. He was born and raised in Łódź, imprisoned in the city’s ghetto, a Holocaust Survivor. Currently lives in Sweden, but visits his hometown exceptionally willingly and as often as possible.

Leon Weintraub’s memories are extremely vivid and rich. They are memories of his childhood, his youth, but also of the cruelty inflicted on him and his family by the Germans. In the depths of his soul he has come to terms with his tormentors, but – as he emphasises – he is still unable to forgive.

The documentary “Leon the boy from the Łódź Ghetto” is partly a sentimental journey by Leon Weintraub to the time of his childhood and youth spent in multicultural Łódź. But these memories are interwoven with painful images from years before – the war, the hunger, the fear, the dehumanisation of the German torturers, the nightmare of the death camps, the Holocaust. The documentary is also the protagonist’s reflection on human nature, the meaning of the words “forgiveness” and “reconciliation”, and an attempt to come to terms with the past.

04.09.2022 (Sunday)

12.00 PM – "O odkrywaniu historii obiektu: bransoletka z getta i losy rodziny Terkeltaubów-Torreyów" [PL]

Moderators: Anna Łagodzińska-Pietras and Agnieszka Szygendowska
Registration: 692 926 319, 42 307 13 82, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Admission: 5 PLN (discounted ticket), 7 PLN (standard ticket)
Organiser: Museum of the City of Łódź
Venue: Museum of the City of Łódź | 15. Ogrodowa St.

2.00 PM – "Discovering the history of an object: a bracelet from the ghetto and the fate of the Terkeltaub-Torrey Family" [ENG]

The background for the meeting will be an unusual bracelet – a souvenir from the ghetto created in occupied Łódź during World War II. The item consists of nine pieces, each depicting a different scene from the everyday life of the so-called “closed district”. A dedication to Dorka Terkeltaub has been engraved on one link, along with the names of the donors.

The bracelet, presented at the “Łódź w Europie. Europa w Łodzi. Ziemia obiecana wczoraj i dziś” / “Łódź in Europe. Europe in Łódź. The promised land of yesterday and today” exhibition, attracts the interest of both museum professionals and visitors to the exhibition, prompting questions about who were the people whose memory is recorded in the object, what was their fate and whether they survived the war. During the meeting at the Museum of the City of Łódź, Agnieszka Szygendowska, conservator of the collection, will answer these questions and share the results of her research into the object in question.

4.00 PM – „Give me back your life” – performative act using text and 4 percussion instruments [PL]

Organisers: Marek Edelman Dialogue Center, Chorea Theatre, Grażyna and Kiejstut Bacewicz Academy of Music in Łódź
Venue: 14. Zachodnia St.

Chaim Mordechaj Rumkowski gave a speech on 4 September 1942 at the fire station square, which heralded the total forbiddance of leaving homes in the ghetto introduced by the Germans. From 5 to 12 September, 20,000 people, including children, the elderly and the sick, were transported from the ghetto to the extermination camp at Chełmno, and murdered by the Germans. Rumkowski began his speech with the infamous words “Give me your children…”. Tomasz Rodowicz will recall the harrowing speech from the Great Szpera.

Artists from the Academy of Music in Łódź have composed six pieces that will be performed on the 4th of September at 14 Zachodnia Street. Contemporary compositions will complement the verbal part. The artists will perform the compositions on percussion instruments.

4.45 PM – A walkway from 14. Zachodnia St. to the Marek Edelman Dialogue Centre following the traces of children from the Łódź Ghetto [PL]

The route of the march from 14 Zachodnia Street to the Dialogue Center will lead alongside the memorial murals of “Children of Bałuty”. The works have been created since 2012, and there are currently several dozen of them. They depict the true figures of Polish, Jewish and Romani children from the Łódź Ghetto. The march ends at the sculpture “Marzenie Abramka” / “Abramek’s Dream” in front of the Dialogue Center.

5.45 PM – Performance at the sculpture of a ghetto boy [PL]

Venue: The Survivors’ Park (in front of the Marek Edelman Dialogue Center building) | 83. Wojska Polskiego St.

In the Survivors’ Park in front of the Dialogue Center building, there is a sculpture inspired by the poem “Dream” by Abramek Koplowicz – a boy from the Łódź Ghetto. Abramek describes his journeys in adulthood. He did not live to see those days. On the 80th anniversary of the Great Szpera, we will symbolically commemorate the children who grew up in the Łódź Ghetto and mostly did not survive the cruelty of the war.

6.00 PM – „Szpera '42“ – meeting with the creators of the outdoor performance “Szpera ’42” from 2021: Ruthie Osterman, Łucja Herszkowicz, Elena Toneva, Tomasz Rodowicz, et al. [PL/ENG]

Venue: Marek Edelman Dialogue Center in Łódź | 83. Wojska Polskiego St.

The creators of the Polish-Israeli theatre project will talk about its creation, the emotions that accompanied them and what they wanted to show to the audience. It will also be an opportunity to reflect on how our awareness has changed 80 years after the Great Szpera, and whether these events are still present in the public debate. Participants of the discussion will include Ruthie Osterman, Łucja Herszkowicz – descendants of the Survivors, and Elena Toneva and Tomasz Rodowicz from the Chorea Theatre. Joanna Podolska will moderate the meeting.

05.09.2022 (Monday)

5.00 PM – Meeting with Dorota Combrzyńska-Nogala, the author of “Jutka’s Insomnia” for teachers and educators [PL]

Organisers: Marek Edelman Dialogue Center, Publishing House Literatura
Venue: Marek Edelman Dialogue Center in Łódź | 83. Wojska Polskiego St.
Registration at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Meeting for teachers and educators. The book “Jutka’s Insomnia” was written in 2012, on the 70th anniversary of the Great Szpera. The main character is a little girl who tries to find herself in a new reality. She lives with her grandfather and aunt in the ghetto. The book was published on the initiative of the Dialogue Center under the honorary patronage of the Children’s Rights Ombudsman. It is a story about war, the fate of children who do not understand it, and the cruelty heaped upon them. The author, Dorota Combrzyńska-Nogala, will talk about the book.

7.00 PM – חלל פנוי | Freed up space – exhibition of Aleksandra Chciuk’s paintings inspired by the history of the Great Szpera [PL]

Venue: Marek Edelman Dialogue Center in Łódź | 83. Wojska Polskiego St.

Aleksandra Chciuk חלל פנוי | Zwolniona przestrzeń | Freed up space – a series of paintings inspired by the Great Szpera made using her own mixed technique: archive photographs, acrylic, gouache, tempera and objects on canvas. Chciuk’s works have been exhibited at the Arsenale at the Venice Art Biennale, Siddhartha Art Gallery in Kathmandu, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, the Mills Gallery in Boston, Dzyga Gallery in Lviv, the Museum of Modern Art and the Leto Gallery in Warsaw, the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, as well as Atlas Sztuki, the Museum of Art, the Signum Foundation Gallery, the Central Museum of Textiles, and other establishments in Łódź.

8.00 PM – Screening of the film “From the depths I call”, directed by Wojciech Gierłowski, 2005 (25’) [PL/ENG]

Venue: Marek Edelman Dialogue Center in Łódź | 83. Wojska Polskiego St.

The film is dedicated to the memory of children who died in the Łódź ghetto and to those few who managed to survive. The authors quit the classical form of historical documentary focussed on impersonal presentation of facts. They combine a documentary with a poetic form, telling the story of the ghetto with children's voices. The reality of life in the ghetto is presented through excerpts from the autobiographical prose of Sara Zyskind, Jehuda Lubiński's diary, Abram Koplowicz's texts and Abram Cytryn's poems. Archival photographs were supplemented by staged shots to create an elegiac image of the Łódź ghetto.

06.09.2022 (Tuesday)

7.00 PM – “For you to survive the war” – performance (written, directed, and performed by Anna Rakowska and Karolina Zajdel) [PL]

Tickets: 40 PLN
Organiser: Artkombinat Monopolis Scene Łódź
Venue: Artkombinat Monopolis Scene Łódź | 62A Kopcińskiego St.

What was it like to live in pre-war Łódź and move to the ghetto? What was it like to grow up in the ghetto? To get married and divorced in the ghetto? To give birth to children and then hand them over for death? To starve to death? To live in the ghetto? To survive and be a survivor? What did people in the ghetto dream about? And what do we dream about? What are all of our hopes and dreams? What do we have in common?
The play’s protagonists, contemporary women, Ania and Karolina, search for answers and find them in the diaries of Rywka Lipszyc and Irene Hauser, in the diary of Tola “without a surname”, and in the memoirs of Halina Elczewska, Zofia Lubińska-Rosset, Mira Krum-Ledowski, Leon Weintraub. They also look for answers within themselves. They weave intimate tales of the ghetto in occupied Łódź in front of the audience, in an attempt to heal the history… And all of it started with a question asked by Anna in 2021: “Why do you actually live in the Bałuty district?” “Why? Because what was here before me drew me in here…”

07.09.2022 (Wednesday)

10.00 AM – Lesson about the Great Szpera for teenagers and a meeting with the Children of the Holocaust [PL]

Venue: Marek Edelman Dialogue Center in Łódź | 83. Wojska Polskiego St.
Registration for schools at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Great Szpera was a shock to the Łódź Ghetto. Between the 5th and 12th of September 1942, the Germans deported around 20,000 children, the elderly, the sick, and those unable to work. They were transported from the ghetto to the extermination camp in Chełmno.
On the 80th anniversary of these events, two Survivors, Irena Szczurek and Zofia Rosset, will share their stories with young people from secondary schools in Łódź.
The meeting with the Survivors will be preceded by a historical introduction by Dialogue Center educator Michał Adamiak.

5.00 PM – Curator tour of the exhibition “War Against Homes. The Neoplastic Room in Solidarity with Ukraine” [PL/UA]

Organiser: Museum of Art in Łódź
Venue: ms1 | 36. Więckowskiego St., entrance from 43. Gdańska St.
Admission: 1 PLN

Opened to the public in 1948, the Neoplastic Room has become a symbol of the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź. Designed by Władysław Strzemiński, at the time of its creation it boldly manifested the opposition of artists to the advancing communist ideology. Today, in view of the tragedies taking place across our eastern border, we dedicate it to the fighting Ukraine.

Historically, it hosted the sculptures of Katarzyna Kobro, spatial compositions and furniture designed by Władysław Strzemiński and examples of paintings by artists from the circles of Constructivism and Neo-plasticism, including Theo van Deosburg and Sophie Taeuber-Arp. In the early 1950s, in the face of the spreading radical cultural policy of the communist authorities, opening it to the public was a manifestation of courage in promoting artistic freedom. Nowadays, neighbouring with exhibitions of contemporary artists, the Neoplastic Room enters into a dialogue with their works, posing a still lively question about the topicality of the problems raised by avant-garde art.

7.00 PM – „Yiddish Tango” – Olga Avigail Mieleszczuk concert with Tango Attack Band: Hadrian Tabęcki – piano, Grzegorz Bożewicz – bandoneon, Piotr Malicki – guitar [PL]

Tickets:
Pre-sale ticket price until 07.08.2022: 69 PLN
Ticket price after 07.08.2022: 79 PLN
Organiser: Artkombinat Monopolis Scene Łódź
Venue: Artkombinat Monopolis Scene Łódź | 62A Kopcińskiego St.

The Polish tango of the pre-war period was the fruit of an intermingling of Slavic and Jewish elements, with the constant inspiration drawn from the Argentine tango in the background. Warsaw, with its cafés, cabarets and revues, was the capital of tango. The majority of authors were of Jewish origin. The lyrics were written by J. Tuwim, A. Włast, W. Szlengel, and the music was composed by H. Wars, the Gold brothers, and J. Petersburski. They largely shaped the image of modern Polish entertainment culture. Thanks to them, there was also a continuous cultural exchange between the Polish and Yiddish circuits.
After the outbreak of war, many of them found themselves on the other side of the wall – in the closed Jewish quarter. This Polish-Jewish tango was forcibly “separated” like lovers, once inseparable. The tango played a double role during the Holocaust. On the one hand, it was a Nazi-imposed element of the repertoire of camp bands, often played at the time of executions; on the other hand, new tangos were written in the ghettos and camps to express the painful experiences of their authors. In both cases, the tango witnessed and carried the story of the omnipresent death.

Olga Avigail Mieleszczuk – singer, accordionist and researcher of Eastern European musical traditions. She specialises in Jewish music, she sings in Yiddish and Hebrew. She currently lives in Jerusalem. She initiates intercultural projects with artists from Poland, Israel and the United States.

08.09.2022 (Thursday)

4.00 PM – Curator tour of the exhibition “Post Office in the Łódź Ghetto” – Adam Sitarek, Ewa Wiatr [PL]

Exhibition organisers: Jewish Research Center Institute of History University of Łódź, State Archive in Łódź, University of Łódź Library
Venue: University of Łódź Library | 32. Jana Matejki St.

For the hundreds of thousands of Jews confined to the ghetto, the post became the only permitted means of communication with the outside world. It soon became apparent that this possibility was also being restricted: at the request of the German ghetto administration, postal services were blocked. During periods of free movement, thousands of parcels and correspondence arrived in the ghetto, and even more were attempted to be sent. Unfortunately, many parcels were stopped by internal censorship. Clear guidelines were followed – no information could come out of the ghetto that could show its brutal reality.
The Postal Department, established in the ghetto, was responsible not only for external contacts by receiving and sending mail, but also for internal correspondence. Through the Judenpost, the Jewish Post Office, allowances were delivered to the unemployed, as well as candy for children on festive occasions, parcels from labour ministries and the most tragic of notices – referrals for deportation outside the ghettos.
The exhibition presents the organisation of the post office, including Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski’s unique idea of developing his own stamp in the ghetto. Postcards will be an equally important element of the exhibition, through which it will be possible to look at the fate of the senders and addressees of the, usually undelivered, correspondence.
The materials for the exhibition come from the collection of Danny Spungen, the largest collection of postal material from the Łódź Ghetto held in private hands, and from the resources of the State Archives in Łódź.
The exhibition is co-sponsored by the Florence and Laurence Spungen Family Foundation, USA.

09.09.2022 (Friday)

5.00 PM – Curator tour of the exhibition “Jerzy Krawczyk. Mice and Men” [PL/ENG]

Organiser: Museum of Art in Łódź
Venue: ms2 | 19. Ogrodowa St.

The exhibition entitled "Jerzy Krawczyk. Mice and Men”, organized in cooperation with Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, displays rarely discussed themes present in the artwork of the artist from Łódź. The exhibition at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź invites us to focus on the perspective that determines all of Krawczyk's work. The new reading of the artist's paintings leaves no doubt that they were entirely marked by the trauma of the Holocaust.

Jerzy Krawczyk is one of the most original Polish painters of the 20th century. Connected with Łódź, his first appearance in public as an artist took place in 1945 at an exhibition at the Centre of Art Promotion in Łódź. He attended Władysław Strzemiński's lectures and in his own way interpreted his Theory of Vision, developing his own painting formula, which he called “spatial realism.” The self-referential theme of “art about art” and personal experience, including the war events, were crucial for his painting. He would focus on them intensively until his suicidal death in 1969.

11.09.2022 (Sunday)

12.00 PM – „The Last Walk” – theatrical walk [PL]

Directed by: Justyna Schabowska
Moderator: Izabela Terela
Organiser: Museum of the Independence Traditions in Łódź
Venue: the area of the former ghetto
Start: 50. Organizacji WiN St.
Cost: 5 PLN per person, paid on the spot

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the deportation of Łódź Ghetto prisoners to the Kulmhof extermination camp in Chełmno. The preserved elements of the space of the former Łódź Ghetto, as well as memoirs, entries of the Łódź Ghetto Chronicle and photographs, make it possible to reconstruct the last path taken by the Jews condemned to deportation.