A Mural Honouring Irena Sendler Erected in Cieszyn

Mateusz Szczepaniak, 16 November 2016
A mural in memory of Irena Sendler now adorns a wall of the Jewish Community Council building in Cieszyn, at ul. Bóżniczej 7. The mural is the creation of two painters, Aneta Paszek and Dariusz Paczkowski, and was the brainchild of the KLAMRA Foundation. The mural is the latest achievement of a year-long community campaign during which murals, honoring Irena Sendler, have appeared in fifteen cities throughout Poland.

Operation "Murals of Irena Sendler” is a grass-roots, communal initiative honouring Righteous Among the Nations, Irena Sendler who, during Warld War II, helped to save many Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto.

This is another initiative of Darek Paczkowski whose activities are aimed at generating, as widely as possibly, community involvement in what he is doing. This is active education. He does many things with children and youth. Among other things, he is the creator of the well-known image of Lenin with a Mohican hairstyle and of murals at the Free Tibet Roundabout in Warsaw, according to Paula Sawicka, during an interview on Polish Radio Three. Sawicka was a one-time opposition activist. Today, she is President of Otwarta Rzeczpospolita (Open Republic) - an organisation combatting anti-Semitism and xenophobia. She was a close friend of Marek Edelman.

Murals have been erected in Białystok, Bielsko-Biała, Bydgoszcz, Bystrzycy Kłodzkiej, Cieszanów, Cieszyn, Gniezno, Góra, Grudziądza, Kraków, Nowy Targ, Opola, Suszec, Warlubie and Żywiec. Below is a film describing the erecting of the mural inCieszyn.