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2012-01-12

School for Dialogue Gala

On January 11th, 2012, the School for Dialogue Gala, an educational program which has been designed and carried out by the Forum for Dialogue Among Nations Foundation, took place in Warsaw. The idea behind this project is to promote the knowledge about many centuries of the Jewish existence in Poland and their contribution to the social, cultural and economic development of our country.

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As part of this program, young people, supervised by Forum instructors, discovered the prewar history of Jewry in their home towns and drafted single handed projects with the view of commemorating this part of the local history. The Gala was attended by the representatives of Warsaw authorities, diplomatic corps and Jewish organizations as well as students and teachers from schools in Chełm, Kock, Nowy Sącz, Otwock, Parysów, Piaseczno, Piastów, Radom, Sławatycze, Szydłów, Ulanów , Warsaw and others.

The students were challenged with difficult tasks. Many participants live in small towns where “people do not like Jews”, as , with full honesty, one of the participants writes in his essay. In Wasilków, junior high school students staged a street performance and did away with a myth of a golden calf that was reportedly kept in the synagogue. In Parysow, the students focused on the Jewish cemetery, which had been almost totally defaced by the locals. Their attempts were rewarded. The Israeli Ambassador in Poland Zvi Rav-Ner thanked the students, saying the following words to them: “You are the avant-garde. You can change the future. I can’t even find suitable words to express how important your work is”.

The first prize in the school student project competition went to the Waclaw Rabczynski Junior High School on Wasilkow. The first award in the essay competition was presented to Agnieszka Kornacka from Warsaw. Other prizes included computers and books. Ten-odd other schools and people were also rewarded. Congratulations to all the winners from the Virtual Shtetl!

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