Page 11 - Centrum Dialogu im. Marka Edelmana w Łodzi. "Fragmenty pamięci".

Fragmenty pamięci Fragments of memory

September 2022 marks the 80th anniversary of the so-called Great Szpera, the action of deporting
nearly 20,000 people from the Łódź ghetto to Chełmno to their deaths, including several thousand
young children. The story of the enclosed district, created by the Germans in 1940 for the Jews of Łódź
in the area of the old town and Bałuty, is divided into the time before the Szpera and after the Szpera.
It is a story about despair and suffering. But also about a memory that persists.
The Great Szpera was the focus of a series of events organised by the Marek Edelman Dialogue Center
in Łódź at the turn of August and September 2022 as part of the celebrations organised by the City of
Łódź to honour the 78th Anniversary of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto Liquidation and the 80th Anniversary
of the Great Szpera: the programme included commemorative ceremonies, lectures, concerts, film
screenings, walks and artistic activities, as well as lessons, exhibitions and publications, but above
all meetings and talks with Survivors.
The Fragments of Memory exhibition consists of stories about survivors of the war who have their
trees in the Survivors’ Park, planted by themselves or their relatives, and is a reminder of the history
of the Great Szpera of September 1942 – those few days that shook the ghetto. Despite the passage
of many decades since the war, the Survivors have continually returned and are returning to what
happened in the ghetto at that time. And they are aware that they should tell the younger generation
what the war was about so that such terrible atrocities do not happen again. They also continuously
call for remembrance and commitment to combating evil and hatred in the world.

In our exhibition, we not only show the stories of the Survivors and their families from before the
war and from the ghetto, but we also talk about their later experiences. Both of those who stayed in
Poland and those who settled in different countries and continents; we also tell about their children
and grandchildren – many of whom are also involved in building bridges between people and nations.

The 2022 commemoration of the Łódź ghetto took place in the shadow of the war in Ukraine, so the
message of dialogue and peace had a special significance. We reminisced about Stella Szafir, a teen-
ager deported from the ghetto and murdered by the Germans during the Great Szpera in September
1942, and Polina, a Ukrainian girl murdered with her parents by Russian diversionaries in February
2022 in Kyiv. This is because, regrettably, history continues to repeat itself, with children dying in wars
caused by adults who fail to learn from the past.

That is why we constantly remind of the history of World War II, the history of the Łódź ghetto and the
Great Szpera; we speak about those murdered in ghettos and camps, but we also show the stories of
the Survivors, and we want to repeat and teach after them that there is nothing more valuable than
Life and Love, that hatred is evil and Good and Love can save. Save people and the world. Or at least
make it a little better.

Joanna Podolska,
director of The Marek Edelman Dialogue Center in Łódź
Łódź, August-September 2022

11