Educator Bogdan Bialek at the rededication of Kielce Pogrom site as a Ukrainian refugee center
The Kielce Example
Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak
There are circles of kindness in the midst of terrible displacement and the agonies of the past.
Today a powerful direction for Kielce as it responded to the current mass of refugees from Ukraine. The generosity of the Polish people has been quite profound throughout this month of war and fleeing refugees. In Warsaw, the estimate is that 70% of its population responded in one fashion or another to the refugee crisis. Through a Jewish lens, I cannot but feel that the dark-laden past was being addressed.
Spend a few minutes with the video of Bogdan Bialek in Kielce on March 23, 2022, at the announcement of the new Ukraine Center. It is estimated that some 300 hundred women and children are housed and aided in the city. Planty 7, the center was repurposed to serve as a day center for children and also a club for adults. Ukrainians will conduct the affairs of the building. The keys were transmitted to two women from Ukraine who will lead and manage affairs.
The Jan Karski Society of Kielce donated its space for the use of the Ukrainian refugees. A seed grant was donated by Yaakov Kotlicki, an Israeli businessman with a family connection to Kielce who reported to Mr. Bialek: “My parents, in 1939, were refugees from Poland to Lviv and, traveling this long way, often found refuge in Ukraine.” Kotlicki further told Bielek: “the war moved him a lot and he himself offered to finance the idea.”
On March 24 the dedication of the Ukrainian Center in Kielce was recorded. I don’t cry except at hearing HaTivkah (The Hope) on certain occasions but I did feel a welling-up of emotion in me as the Polish and Ukrainian anthems sung one after the other. The presence of the Catholic and the Greek Catholic priests together blessing this effort added another historic dimension of reconciliation to the dedication.
Bogdan Bialek is an educator and psychologist who orchestrated a multi-year series of public forums in the city of Kielce to address the past. Bialek is the eponymous focus of the documentary of Bogdan’s Journey about the city of Kielce’s spiritual journey from the infamous post-holocaust 1946 pogrom. Among the public fora of the Jan Karski Society is an ongoing seminar for high school teachers about anti-semitism. Led by the charismatic leader, Bialek a tireless proponent of human dignity, the Jan Karski Society has addressed other issues and educated people about the importance of Judaism and Jews in Poland’s history and its importance for Christianity.
Friends of Jewish Renewal in Poland and Beit Polska have organized visits to Kielce on July 4 for many years to participate in the memorial events. The first webinar in the series Freighted Legacies: The Culture and History of Jewish Interactions in Poland focuses on the July 4th pogrom, the film Bogdan’s Journey, and the memory of families from Kielce including Mr. Kotlicki (first ten minutes), Dr. Noachim Marco (minute 14 – 18), and Sid Machtiger. The frankness and directness of Bogdan’s leadership addressing attempts to engage in Holocaust distortion.
The current efforts of the Jan Karski Society can be supported directly at the website. Friends of Jewish Renewal in Poland and Beit Polska’s Refugee efforts will transmit your tax-deductible donation.
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