PIYE Student Exchange 2011
Twenty young people – students from Israel and Poland – have participated between September 8th and 19th in the first part of the successive edition of the PIYE 2011 program, this time sponsored by the Polish Righteous – Recalling Forgotten History project. Participants not only represented different study areas but also different approaches to the past determined by their family histories and ethnic background. The Israeli group was composed both of descendants of Holocaust survivors as well as people whose Sephardic families had not experienced the tragedy of the Holocaust. One participant was a young Israeli Arab woman who took part in the project in an attempt to understand the phenomenon of war and find an answer to the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Arabs. Polish participants in the exchange included students with Jewish roots, students whose families included Righteous Among the Nations, but also students who spoke of amnesia veiling the topic of Gentile-Jewish relations in Poland.
This year's agenda was focused on contemporary interpretation of the past. Students worked on materials provided by the stories of the Righteous living in Warsaw. Discussions about the past extended beyond the historical discourse and included artistic means of expression. The starting point was a historical workshop at which students were acquainted with the facts about life in Warsaw under the Nazi occupation and the fate of Polish Gentiles and Jews entangled in the tragic reality. Workshop participants analyzed four Warsaw stories which gave them food for thought on the absence of an unequivocal interpretation of human conduct. The stories of Father Godlewski and the Żak, Durek and Żabiński families were a starting point for further work. Performance and film workshops gave students the opportunity to select the preferred method of expression and, consequently, the manner of dealing with stories of the past. Students took their ideas into the space of the city. Their activities tore down the walls of the workshop room and invaded public space. Wartime heroes appeared in public again, called back to life by young Poles and Israelis. Students resuscitated memories of wartime events around Grzybowski Square and Warsaw Zoo, involving accidental passers-by in their activities. Tension, pain, fear and despair often accompanied outdoor activities and there were difficult conversations with Warsaw inhabitants and project participants. Past events invoked by the young people triggered strong emotions, giving rise to discussions about collective memory, interpretation of history or national stereotyping. Stories of the Righteous and the Rescued reconstructed by both sides entangled in the cruel and painful past enforced their reinterpretation. Since the young people were free to use different forms of expression, they conveyed their message both in verbal and non-verbal ways.
The effect of students’ work is presented in four documentary films. Two that are ready and two that are still unedited had their first public screening at Obiekt Znaleziony Cafe. It was evident that this manner of organizing the group’s work was optimal – the joint undertaking fully integrated and opened up the participants. Creators of the films recounted how difficult and, at the same time, interesting and instructive, it had been to take up a delicate topic, to talk about it with strangers in a strange country. Film presentations were followed by questions from workshop leaders and other participants. The performance group presented a fragment of its activities in public space. Projects developed in Warsaw will travel with the students to Israel. There, with the help of Tel Aviv University and the Polish Institute in Tel Aviv, they will be shown to audiences in Israel.
The last two days of the exchange were spent in Krakow. Students jointly decided to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp where they prepared a ceremony in honor of the victims .
Polish students will go to Israel in the fall – they hope that they will continue the work started in Poland, finish up the films and conversations begun in Warsaw, and that the films will be shown to the Israeli public.
The Jewish Historical Institute Association was supporting the project.
The Project is co-financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland within the Project „ Promocja wiedzy o Polsce”, private donors Ygal Ozechov and Tomek Ulatowski, TP Group, partner of the Museum educational programs, Tel Aviv University and Polish Institute in Tel Aviv.
