8 Kolobrzeska, Bydgoszcz, Poland
Meeting with the Holocaust Survivor, Former Prisoners of Nazi German Concentration Camps and Righteous Among the Nations, is possible in the Galicja Museum. This will be unique history lessons. By showing the fates of real people and their experiences makes the facts and figures from textbooks closer and more real. The stories of older people who have gone through so much have a great impact on young people by changing their worldview. The meetings are translated by museum staff who are experienced in working with Witnesses and have the necessary knowledge in this subject.
Please note that ITS-Poland works with groups only (10 participants and more).
Meeting with survival and witnesses are unique history lessons. By showing the fates of real people and their experiences makes the facts and figures from textbooks closer and more real. The Museum’s Galicja offers the opportunity to hear a Holocaust survivor share his or her experiences.
The Holocaust is most often described as the annihilation of the Jewish nation. Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire”. The destruction of the Jewish people was one of the most important elements of Nazi criminal policy which was the official doctrine of the German state in the 1930s.
The person directly responsible for the extermination of several million people during World War II, including about 6 million Jews, is Adolf Hitler. In 1933 he began the implementation of a racist and anti-Semitic program, which provided for the isolation of the Jewish population and the gradual deprivation of all civil and civil rights. In the fall of 1941, it was decided to "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". Most of the mass genocides took place in the Polish territories occupied by the Third Reich. It was an attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish people, as well as the extermination of the Roma whom Hitler considered "subhuman".
Concentration camps, led by Auschwitz, where over a million Jews were murdered, became factories of death and the place of extermination of many nations. The most common form of killing was the gassing of prisoners with the deadly Zyklon B. In addition to the Jewish population, the persecution also affected Slavs, especially Poles, as well as Gypsies, clergy and communists. Also the disabled, homosexuals, Catholic and Protestant clergy, Jehovah's witnesses, left-wing activists, communists and members of Freemasonry were murdered with full premeditation. More than 2 million victims of the Holocaust were children. In total, as a result of Nazi terror and genocide during the six years of World War II, about 11 million people died.
The Galicia Jewish Museum has worked with survivors and witnesses from the very beginning of its existence. Their cooperation with survivors takes various forms: from exhibitions, publications and educational materials based on their stories, family photographs and documents to organising meetings at the Museum with young people and adults from Poland and abroad. Meeting with survivals and witnesses are unique history lessons. By showing the fates of real people and their experiences the facts from textbooks are closer and more real. Visitors have opportunity Visitors have opportunity for direct contact and asking questions.
Meetings, upon prior reservation, are held at the Galicja Museum. The Museum is located on ul. Dajwór in the heart of Kazimierz, Kraków’s Jewish quarter, and is a short taxi ride or 20 minute walk from the city centre. Trams also pass close to the Museum: from the city centre, take tram 3, 9, 19, 24 or 50 to the ul. Miodowa stop, and then walk down ul. Dajwór to the Museum. The museum if fully accessible to guests on wheelchairs as well as those who are visually challenged.
Meetings in the Galicia Jewish Museum are organized with the intent to provide a friendly atmosphere for survivors, one that makes them comfortable to tell their stories and answer all kinds of questions from the audience afterwards. Meetings are translated by employees of the museum who are experienced in working with survivors and have a background on the subject. They usually last 90 minutes.
