The 79th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

April 09, 2022

by tskz

The ceremony at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes and the March in Memory of Insurgents shall be organised on
19 April this year by the Social and Cultural Association of Jews in Poland in cooperation with the Warsaw Ghetto Museum and the Jewish Historical Institute to commemorate the 79^th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Subsequent anniversaries of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising are among the most important events celebrated by the Jewish community in Poland. TSKŻ, founded after the Second World War, has always been, ever since its origins, the custodian of the memory of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and such memory was carefully cultivated also in the hardest times experienced by Jews in Poland.

“The need to celebrate subsequent anniversaries of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is an inherent part of identity of each TSKŻ member. On 19^th April, all Polish Jews feel strongly united regardless of where they have come from, or where they currently reside. Before 2005, when the UN adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it was the anniversary that symbolised the memory of all Holocaust victims. Over the past few years, the ceremony held at the Monument located in Warsaw’s district of Muranów has also attracted many residents of Warsaw. This confirms the fact that the memory of the uprising is no longer just a Jewish memory, but an immanent part of Polish history as well. – Artur Hofman, Chair of the Social and Cultural Association of Jews in Poland.

The key highlight of the anniversary – i.e. the ceremony at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes commences at 12:00 noon. The event will be attended by members of various Jewish organisations, veterans, Righteous Among the Nations, representatives of state and local authorities, ambassadors, representatives of Polish cultural institutions and common residents of Warsaw. After the ceremony, the participants of the March in Memory of Insurgents will place flowers at subsequent memorials associated with the Warsaw Ghetto, encountered along their route. The celebrations will end at Umschlagplatz.

Please confirm your participation in the ceremony at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes at: komunikacja@tskz.pl by 15.04.2022 at the latest – in case of institutions.

Non-institutional guests are not obliged to confirm their attendance.

At 7:00 PM, at the cinema hall of the National Ethnographic Museum, a concert by Izabela Szafrańska “THE JEWISH STREET” will take place. The artist’s repertoire will include Jewish songs, and other pieces based on Jewish and wartime themes.

Izabela Szafrańska is a graduate of Cultural Studies at the University of Białystok, and winner of many Polish festival and competition awards. Ms Szafrańska is a semi-finalist of The Voice of Poland and a finalist of Must be the Music. She gives concerts both in Poland and abroad, and has been dealing in Jewish and Sephardic music for several years.

To get your free e-ticket for the concert, please confirm your attendance at: biuroprasowe@1943.pl by15.04.2022

The celebrations will also include meetings with authors which will take place at the Babel Club.

20^th April, 6:00 PM, Klub Babel, ul. Próżna 5 – A meeting devoted to the publication titled: “The Warsaw Ghetto in Polish Literature. The Anthology”. The meeting with Professor Sławomir Buryła will be moderated by Wiesława Młynarczyk, and Sławomir Holland will read out selected extracts from the book.

The anthology of texts selected and analysed by Professor Sławomir Buryła offers the most extensive presentation of the Warsaw Ghetto in Polish prose writing and poetry. The synthetic collection of texts allows the readers to familiarise themselves not only with authors who are universally famous for their presentations of the Warsaw Ghetto, such as Hanna Krall, Kazimierz Moczarski, Czesław Miłosz or Jerzy Andrzejewski, but also with other writers who have been frequently overlooked in this context.

21^st April, 6:00 PM – meeting with Hanka Grupinska, author of the books “Ciągle po kole”, “Odczytanie Listy” and “12 opowieści żydowskich”. All these stories focus on specific individuals, their difficult daily life in the time of the Holocaust and attempts to cope with the disintegration of their everyday reality. In all the three books, the writer, Hanka Grupińska, tries to comprehend and describe “the impossible”, adopting her unique point of view and often neglecting pure facts, which are sometimes impossible to recreate. The author focuses on individual and intimate experience, and minor details out of which her micro novel is constructed. The meeting will be moderated by Miłka Skalska.