Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak
Beit Polska refugee relief efforts announced its official name today – Janusz Korczak Society Child Relief. At the behest of the World Union for Progressive Judaism president Rabbi Sergio Bergman, we shared a few anecdotes about the immediate efforts to aid refugees in Poland initiated by our community and many other Polish civic groups.
Sergio Bergman
We declared our focus to be on the needs of child care and child-parent trauma. In the next several weeks we will iterate our plans for sustained support to the many Ukrainian women and children in Poland. We are addressing the talented pool of Ukrainian therapists, teachers, and mothers with programs and structures for them to address their own needs to care for children so mothers can work as well as attend to profound displacement in their lives.
Dr. Janusz Korczak was a tireless advocate for children’s physical and emotional health in Poland in the ’20s and ’30s. Korczak’s skill in helping children develop self-respect/self-esteem for themselves and others was expressed in the two orphanages he founded, Catholic and Jewish; and in the children’s stories such as King Matt the First.
The Janusz Korczak Child Relief efforts invite colleagues who attended the session to contact Rabbi Haim Beliak – haimbeliak@gmail.com. We will need the support of the World Union for Progressive Judaism and its constituency congregations as well as other relief agencies to address this problem at the scale it demands. Beliak has served as executive director of Friends of Jewish Renewal in Poland for the last 12 years and he emceed the presentation.
In a brief presentation to assembled rabbis via zoom Marek Jezowski, the chair of Beit Polska speaking from Poland, distinguished between the ad hoc efforts to feed and house people and the mid-term and long-term needs.
Dr. Dominika Zakrzewska
Dr. Dominika Zakrzewska, Beit Polska’s educational coordinator addressed the issues of trauma and the holistic educational approach we are developing. Zakrzewska is currently in Chicago on a Fulbright until May and simultaneously she is completing her MA at Hebrew Union College in the Zelikow non-profit management program.
Mr. Jonathan Mills, a businessman who lived in Poland from 1990 to 2000 is leading a major effort to address the need with “pop-up” child care centers that will hire Ukrainian-speaking teachers, therapists, and personnel will allow mothers to find work in the fields to sustain their families. These centers will address the special circumstances of families under stress with subsidized care that is culturally appropriate. Mills has assembled a team of childcare experts and is seeking support for this effort. The child trauma approach will be integrated into the curriculum of the care centers.
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