Righteous Conference, Exhibition and Film Screening in Chmielnik

Redakcja, 16 November 2016
The "Świętokrzyskie Sztetl" education centre and Museum in Chmelnik will host an academic conference, 4th-7th October 2016, on the subject of Jews who were helped by Poles during the Holocaust, with specific emphasis on the Kielce region. The event coincides with the 5th Andrzej Kozieja Jewish Film Festival.

Participants in the conference "Whoever Saves One Life Saves the World Entire" will include historians, museum curators and archivists from Kielce, Sandomierz, Katowice and Lublin. The program includes four panel discussions - "Methodology and Theology”, "A Village Saves a Life", "The Righteous in the Shtetls" and "The Social Elite and the Holocaust and the Participation of the Clergy in the Saving of Jews”.

The conference will be accompanied by the exhibition "My Jewish Parents, My Polish Parents”, created by the "Children of the Holocaust in Poland Association, together with the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, with financial support from the Rose Luksemburg Foundation in Poland. The exhibition was first shown in 2015 at the POLIN Museum. More about the exhibition.

The film festival program will feature screenings of Agnieszka Holland's W ciemności (In Darkness), Historia Kowalskich (The Kowalski Family Story) directed by Maciej Pawlicki and Arkadiusz Gołębiewski, as well as Sprawiedliwy (Righteous) by Michał Szczerbic. Students can take part in workshops and will have the opportunity to meet with actor Robert Więckiewicz. The detailed program can be viewed here.

Event organisers are the Chmielnik Council and the "Świętokrzyskie Sztetl" Education Centre and Museum. The conference is part of a program by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs aimed at portraying the involvement of Poles in saving Jews during the period of German occupation of Poland during World War II.