Walk "Following the Righteous in Śródmieście"
The walk was conducted by Daria Boniecka-Stępień, collaborator of the project “Polish Righteous – Recalling Forgotten History” and member of the Association of Tour Guides “Golden Duck”. The walk lasted 1.5 hours and people from around 20 to 70 years old participated in it.
The participants visited the recently renovated Grzybowski Square, as well as the Twarda and Sienna Streets. The materials used during the walk – archival photos of the Righteous and rescued, excerpts from audio interviews and a map of the ghetto – aroused great interest of the participants. Some of them carefully listened to the stories of rescue, deeply touched.
During this year’s walk around the Śródmieście district, participants got to know the stories of the Żak and Jętkiewicz families, who had been hiding Jews during the Nazi occupation, near the Grzybowski Square and the Twarda and Sienna Streets. The Żaks gave shelter to 14 people and Henryk and Janina Jętkiewicz hid two escapees from the Kraków ghetto.
In the end of the walk promotional materials of the project “Polish Righteous – Recalling Forgotten History” were distributed, among them an album devoted to the Righteous and DVD’s with films presenting the Polish Righteous.
The next walk – this time around the district of Praga – will be held on June 4th. It starts on at noon in front of the entrance to the Prague Park, near the “ZOO” inscription. The walk around the Praga district will commemorate Antonina Żabińska and her husband Jan, who was the director of the Warsaw zoo during the Second World War. The Żabińskis helped many Jews, whom they had been hiding in the villa they were living in and in the pheasant area of the zoo.
Both routes are based on the accounts and documents collected during the research of the project “Polish Righteous – Recalling Forgotten History” of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
The interviews with the Righteous, rescuers and rescued were edited and published on the website www.sprawiedliwi.org.pl thanks to the financial support of the European Commission.
More about the walks in the footsteps of the Righteous in the ”Educational programs” section.
