Polish Righteous Exhibition on Show in Slovenia

M. Służewski, M. Szczepaniak, 16 November 2016
From last Wednesday, our exhibition "They Risked Their Lives - Poles Who Saved Jews During the Holocaust" has been on display in the medieval synagogue of Maribor. The event was organised to coincide with the International Day of Remembrance of Holocaust Victims.

The exhibition was created in 2013 by the POLIN Museum in partnership with the Ministry of ForeignAffairs. Since then, it has gone on show in places such as Chicago, Dusseldorf, El Paso, Hawaii„ Madrid, Melbourne, Moscow and Paris. It has been translated into five languages - English, Spanish, German, Russian and Lithuanian.

From the 27th January, the exhibition can be viewed at the Maribor Synagogue, Jewish Cultural Legacy Centre. Among those attending the opening were Polish Ambassador Paweł Czerwiński, Israeli Ambassador Shmuel Meirom, Dr Jakob Haselhuber, representing the German Ambassador, Marbor Mayor Andrej Fištravec, Chairman of the Slovenian Jewish Community Council Igor Vojtic and several dozen local Maribor residents.

"Today, we observe the Day of Remembrance of Holocaust Victims", said POLIN Museum's Krzysztof Bielawski at the opening. "We remember millions of Holocaust victims. We also remember those whose survived the nightmare of war and those who helped them."

Today, the Slovenian Jewish community is small in number. Prior to World War II, around 100 Jews lived in Maribor. As a result, the subject of the Holocaust is not so widely known in this country.

"For many years, the media here formed the opinion that the Poles had aided the Germans against the Jews", said the Slovenian Jewish Community Council Chairman Igor Vojtic. "This exhibition shows examples to the contrary”.

An academic conference also took place on Wednesday at the Maribor University, its topic being the saving of Jews during the Holocaust. The central figure was France Punčuha, a Slovenian diplomat who, during World War II, aided Jews in Warsaw. In 2014, France Punčuh was posthumously honoured as a Righteous Among the Nations of the World.

The exhibition tells the story of the Righteous Among the Nations - Poles who risked their lives, and the lives of their families, to help persecuted Jews. The exhibition shows the fate of the rescuers and the rescued in the historical context of occupied Poland. It explains the scale of help provided and what motived the Righteous to do what they did.   The exhibition was prepared in the basis of testimonies collected from the Righteous themselves and from those who were rescued. These were collected via the "Polish Righteous – Recalling Forgotten History" internet project of the POLIN Museum.   The Słovenian showing of the exhibition has been organised by Paweł Wieleba  from the Polish Embassy and Marjetka Bedrač from the Maribor Synagogue Jewish Cultural Legacy Centre. The exhibition will remain open in Maribor until 31st March 2016.