Soirée devoted to Henryk Sławik

This event will take place at the Center, 17 Meiselsa Street in the Kraków district of Kazimierz.

Henryk Sławik, called “the Polish Wallenberg”, is a hero of the Second World War, a Righteous Among the Nations. It is estimated that he rescued about 5,000 Jews.

In cooperation with József Antall, representative of the Hungarian government, he provided military internees and civilian refugees with false papers that saved their lives in numerous cases.

Together with his collaborator Henryk Zimmermann, Sławik also helped Jews and organized false documents for them, testifying their so-called “Aryan” origin.

Together with József Antall, Zdzisław Antoniewicz, the prelate Miklós Beresztóczy, bishop of Vác – Rev. Dr. Árpád Hanauer, and above all primate Jusztinián cardinal Serédi, he founded an orphanage in the town of Vac near Budapest– Jewish children had been hiding there.

Henryk Sławik was arrested in 1944, after the Nazis entered Hungary. During the investigation he acted in a heroic way, taking all the responsibility for saving Jews upon himself and did not admit he knew Antall. He was probably executed in August 1944 in the Nazi camp Mauthausen.

The Bayit Hadash (New Home) Month of Encounters with Jewish Culture has been organized by the Center for Jewish Culture in Kraków since 1996. As part of this event, numerous concerts, lectures and meetings with authors are held.

The Center for Jewish Culture was founded on November 24th, 1993.

Its main goals are: to preserve the Jewish heritage in the Kazimierz district of Kraków, to develop Polish-Jewish dialogue, to promote the values of an open civil society and to disseminate knowledge of the history and culture of the Polish Jews among young people.

The full program of the next Month of Encounters with Jewish Culture can be found on the website of the Judaica Foundation – Center for Jewish Culture.