Wystawa „Lublin. Pamięć miejsca”

Maria Zawadzka, 16 November 2016
The exhibition „Lublin. Memory of  Place” has been recently opened at the Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre. It presents hundreds of photos depicting prewar Lublin, as well as recordings of accounts, archival documents, plans and stories of the Righteous from Lublin.

The starting point of the visit is a hall in which, on one of the walls called Wall of Memory-Wall of Voices – several dozen boxes with speakers have been hung.

Recordings of accounts of old inhabitants of Lublin are played, describing particular streets, shops, synagogues, Jewish craftsmen, as well as typical tastes, smells and noises of the city of that time.

“The Wall of Voices” is based on the Archive of Spoken History of the Lublin center. This archive, currently located in the hall where the 4-year-old Jewish girl Zofia Klawisz was hidden during the Second World War – contains about 1.5 thousand accounts and stories (about 4.5 thousand hours)

In the hall devoted to the victims of the Holocaust can be seen 70 photos depicting the Lublin ghetto, made by one of the German soldiers.

Another room is devoted to those Poles who were honored with the title “Righteous Among the Nations” for rescuing Jews during the Second World War. It presents the Righteous from the Lublin region – visitors can listen to their accounts and get to know the stories of Jews they rescued.

Another element of the exhibition is a virtual model of the former Jewish district in Lublin. In one of the rooms visitors can see 840 pictures presenting reconstructions of various buildings, among them tenements, shops and synagogues that existed before the war. After choosing a building, it is possible to get to know its specific history.

The exhibition opened at the Grodzka Gate Center is a modernized and extended version of the permanent exhibition entitled “Portrait of a Place”. Its modernization was financially supported by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

The Grodzka Gate is a cultural institution located in Lublin. Its main goal is to protect the cultural heritage of the region and provide education, as well as gather materials connected with the Jewish inhabitants of Lublin. One of the initiatives of this institution is the project “Lights in the Darkness – Righteous Among the Nations”.