Context
On August 15, 1942, in the forest near Olszewnica Nowa, the German gendarmerie executed 120 Romani and Jewish people, including men, women, and children. The victims were brought to the site from Fort III in Pomiechówek and shot.
On June 3, 2024, the Zapomniane Foundation, together with the Jaw Dikh Foundation and Artur Sierawski, a memory activist, historian, and teacher, organized workshops for youth from the Janówek Primary School (Poland). First, they restored markers from the mass grave in Olszewnica Nowa and shared the history of the victims. Then, they visited the memorial site and embedded the markers in the ground.
Highlights
- Raising awareness among young people about the Romani and Jewish communities of the region and its multicultural history.
- Participatory actions aimed at memorializing minority groups and sensitizing youth to their history and culture.
- Collaboration with organizations and individuals engaged in memory activism.
Challenges
- HOW to incorporate the history of Romani and Jewish minorities in the education of school youth?
- HOW to combine information about Romani and Jewish culture with the historical experiences of Romani and Jewish people during the war?
- HOW to involve youth from the majority group in meaningful commemoration of minorities?
Solutions
- Collaboration with people/organizations representing ethnic and national minorities, with their direct involvement in the project.
- Utilizing the knowledge of local activists and guardians of history regarding the region’s past in the memorialization process.
- Engaging local youth in creative and substantive work on the multicultural history of the region and the memory of it.
Description
On June 3, 2024, the Zapomniane Foundation and the Jaw Dikh Foundation organized workshops for youth from two classes at the Janówek Primary School. These workshops focused on educating students about Romani and Jewish communities, as well as the restoration of memorial markers for the mass grave in Olszewnica Nowa. On two gravestones, Romani and Jewish inscriptions and symbols were engraved using a laser.
The Romani inscriptions were consulted with Monika Szewczyk, a Romani researcher, activist, and member of the Jaw Dikh Foundation. The presence of people from both the Jewish and Romani communities helped introduce the students to both cultures.
The event was preceded by field and archival research and made possible through collaboration with Artur Sierawski, a historian and teacher, who is a guardian of Jewish memory in the region, focusing on Jewish history, places, and individuals.
After the workshops, the entire group went to the site of the mass execution to place the markers.
Conclusions
- The participatory format of the event (workshops) allowed for the combination of several functions: educational, memorial, and historical.
- Direct contact with individuals representing different communities and cultures allowed for the verification of potential stereotypical assumptions and perceptions.
- Collaborative work on the wooden memorial form increased the sense of agency among all groups involved.
Funding
The event was organized as part of the “MultiMemo: Multidirectional Memory, Remembering for Social Justice” project, co-financed by the European Union under the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV 2021-2027) program.
Photos – Zapomniane Foundation