This year marks the eighth edition of the festival, which includes a range of activities highlighting the local history of the local Jewish community, spanning over 500 years.
Before World War II, Jews made up nearly half of the town’s population. Most were murdered during the Holocaust, either in the Płońsk ghetto, which the Germans established from 1940 to 1942, or after being deported to Nazi death camps.
In 2023, the town opened the "House of Remembrance," a museum located in a restored building on Warszawska Street that features exhibits on the history of the Jewish residents of Płońsk and surrounding areas.
One display is entitled Look—Remember, after a message written on the back of a photograph from the 1930s by Chawcia Jakubowicz, a Jewish resident of the town.
One of the festival’s main attractions this year is the unveiling of a model of Płońsk’s Great Synagogue, which existed from the late 17th century until the mid-20th century.
The model was created by Zdzisław Leszczyński, head of the Vistula River Museum and a specialist in historical modeling.
Speaking to Polish state news agency PAP, Leszczyński explained that the synagogue model, built at a scale of 1:50, took four months to complete and was based on archival photographs and other historical documentation.
He noted that the project was particularly challenging due to the synagogue's intricate details, especially its Baroque façade.
The Great Synagogue, originally constructed around 1670, was destroyed during World War II and finally dismantled in the 1950s. The site where it once stood is now home to the local branch of Poland’s Social Insurance Institution (ZUS).
The festival, organized by the Płońsk Municipal Cultural Center in partnership with the Nobiscum Foundation from Płock, runs until Tuesday and features several other key events.
These include the launch of a book by Gabriela Nowak-Dąbrowska entitled Płońsk in 19th-Century Archival Drawings and an exhibition on 19th-century architecture in Mazovian Jewish towns, on display at the Municipal Cultural Center.
Film screenings, including March '68, followed by a discussion with director Krzysztof Lang, and a monodrama performed by Alina Świdowska from Warsaw’s Jewish Theatre, are also part of the program.
Children can participate in workshops centered around the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, and on Monday a "March of Silence" was held in Płońsk to honor Holocaust victims, under the auspices of the Israeli embassy in Poland.
David Ben-Gurion, born in Płońsk, played a pivotal role in the Zionist movement before emigrating to what was then Ottoman-controlled Palestine in 1906.
He later declared Israel’s independence in 1948 and served as its first prime minister.
Płońsk has maintained a partnership with Israel’s Ramat ha-Negev region since 1997, where Ben-Gurion is buried.
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP