JCC Warsaw Foundation in partnership with Festivalt, Fundacja Urban Memory, Fundacja Zapomniane, Hochschule Fur Jüdische Studien Heidelberg, Ceji, Fundacja Dokumentacji Cmentarzy Żydowskich, Fundacja Formy Wspólne, Otwarta Rzeczpospolita, Wydawnictwo Czarne, Makabi Warszawa invite you to the series of events “MultiMemo. Inclusive Memory of Warsaw”, which will take place on April 16-23, 2023, to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

• April 16, 2023, 5:00 PM, Shucked memory:

Meeting about Warsaw Ghetto Uprising heroins around the book “A Question of Character. Women fighters from the Warsaw Ghetto” (Czarne).

Shana Penn, Taube Foundation, Network of East-West Women in conversation with Sylwia Chutnik (editor) and Patrycja Dołowy, Zuzanna Hertzberg, Natalia Judzińska, Karolina Sulej (authors). With an introduction by Monika Sznajderman (editor and publisher). || Location: JCC Warsaw, Chmielna 9A st

• April 18, 2023, 7:00 PM, Sound memory:

Michał Michalski, piano concert tribute to inhabitants of Warsaw Ghetto. The program includes Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp minor and Moscheles’s Sonata Melancholique, among others. || Location: JCC Warsaw, Chmielna 9A st

• April 19, 2023, 12:00 PM, Grassroot VI Independent Commemoration of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Anniversary.

Our memory must continue despite the difficulties of our times. This year, we gather again beacause we remember. We remember what happened. We remember those that fought. We remember those that died. And we remember those that kept that memory alive. For us, as for Marek Edelman, the commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is a matter of memory. We do not want to take part in official commemorations, appropriated by politicians. We believe that memory should be a common good, created from the bottom up. || Location: Monument on Szmul Zygielbojm square

• April 19, 2023, 9:00 PM, Local memory:

The Great Synagogue Restores Memory, a projection by Gabi von Seltmann organised with Open Republic. || Location: Bankowy Square

• April 20, 2023, 12:00 PM

A guided walk with Paula Sawicka, following the traces of Marek Edelman and Michał Klepfisz. Organized by Open Republic.

Registration is required via the form

• April 20, 2023, 2:00 PM, Personal memory:

Zikaron BaSalon with Józef Hen, the oldest Holocaust survivor from Warsaw. || Location: JCC Warsaw, Chmielna 9A st

• April 21, 2023, 12:00 PM, Marginalised memory: 

A guided walk with Paula Sawicka, following the traces of Marek Edelman and Michał Klepfisz. With Open Republic and Makabi Warsaw

II Location: Franciszkańska 14 (corner of Bonifraterska)

• April 21, 2023, 8:00 PM, Marginalised memory:

Shabbat with Irena Klepfisz. lesbian poet, child Holocaust survivor from Warsaw Ghetto and political activist  and with her poems searching for diverse memories and identities, read by actors, translators and invited guests || Location: JCC Warsaw, Chmielna 9A st

• April 23, 2023, 12:00 PM , Entangled memory:

Women’s Civic Disobedience – a guided walk with Jagna Kofta. || Location: Palace of Culture in the front of Studio Theatre

• April 23, 2023, 4:00 PM, Entangled memory:

Patrycja Dołowy in conversation with the children of Holocaust: Inka Sobolewska-Pyz, Matti Greenberg and Anna Liro. || Location: JCC Warsaw, Chmielna 9A st

The events will be held in English and Polish. Participation is free, but due to limited seating, registration is required via the form: https://bit.ly/polifonie-form

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken released the 47^th annual Human Rights Report.

The entire report can be found on the U.S. Department of State’s website: https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/.

The Poland chapter is available on the U.S. Embassy website: https://pl.usembassy.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/poland_hrr_2022.pdf.

The Open Republic Association against Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia and a private person sued Wojciech Olszański and Marcin Osadowski – the organizers of the anti-Semitic, hate-provoking assembly, which culminated in the burning of a copy of the Kalisz Statute on November 11, 2021 on the market square in Kalisz.

The Plaintiffs indicate that the Defendants, by burning a copy of the Kalisz Statute, preaching anti-Semitism and using hate speech against the Jewish national minority – which has been an integral part of the Polish Nation for centuries – unlawfully jeopardized the good name of the Polish Nation, as well as Plaintiffs’ personal rights, such as national dignity.

The actions of the Defendants and the slogans proclaimed by them put the Polish Nation in a false, extremely negative light and create a false image of the Republic of Poland. Slandering national minorities, calling for physical persecution of members of these minorities, calling for revenge on Jews and expulsion of them from Poland, as well as referring to them as “enemies of the homeland” – are in blatant contradiction with the fundamental values of the Republic of Poland. The statements and actions of the Defendants presented in the public forum humiliate not the Jews themselves, but the entire Polish Nation. Preaching anti-Semitic and xenophobic content violates the ideals of a democratic and multicultural society, and burning a copy of the Kalisz Statute is a kind of act of profanation of our national history.

88th PEN International Congress
Uppsala, September 27 – October 1, 2022

RESOLUTION ON THE WAR IN UKRAINE
Proposed by the Writers for Peace Committee
Seconded by PEN Ukraine

Three years since Russia’s unrecognised ‘annexation’ of Crimea in violation of international law and the de facto control by pro–Russian armed groups of the self–proclaimed ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ and ‘Luhansk People’s Republic’, the human rights situation in Ukraine continues to raise serious concerns. Over 10,000 people have been killed, hundreds of thousands displaced and more than 23,000 injured on all sides of the conflict since the beginning of the conflict in 20141 . In the course of the crisis, dozens of journalists have been detained, kidnapped, tortured or otherwise harassed solely for carrying out their work. At least five journalists and two media workers have been killed.

In Crimea, independent journalists are unable to work openly while journalists from mainland Ukraine have been denied access and turned away at the de facto border. Access to independent media from mainland Ukraine has been blocked. Journalists and bloggers critical of Russia’s occupation and ‘annexation’ of Crimea face prosecution and prison sentences. The persecution and harassment of Crimean Tatars, who bear the brunt of the repression, has intensified. Many have been subjected to enforced disappearances and the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, an elected representative body, has been arbitrarily banned as ‘extremist’.

On July 22, 1942, the Germans began deporting the inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka. The brutal liquidation action that lasted nearly two months resulted in the death of over 300,000 Jews. During the ninth March of Remembrance we will especially commemorate Adam Czerniaków – the educator, social activist and journalist, city councilor of Warsaw, senator of the Second Polish Republic. In the Warsaw ghetto, he was the president of the Judenrat (Jewish Council). On July 23, the day after the ‘resettlement’ began, Adam Czerniaków committed suicide, which was an expression of protest and helplessness against the deportation of the ghetto inhabitants, especially small orphans.

22 July marks the European Day for Victims of Hate Crime. Established by the Council of Europe’s “No Hate Speech Movement” it commemorates the 77 young victims of Anders Breivik’s 2011 attack on Utøya island near Oslo.

Thousands of people from Bosnia-Herzegovina and around the world have descended on Srebrenica for the 27th anniversary of Serbian massacre

Serbian forces summarily executed more than 8,000 Bosnian men and boys. About 100,000 people, including women and children died during Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war.

Families of 50 recently identified victims will rebury their loved ones after almost three decades of searching through the mass graves scattered around the eastern Bosnian town.

The Srebrenica massacre is Europe’s only acknowledged genocide since the Holocaust and is the only one legally defined as such by many countries and two United Nations courts.

A special U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague found Bosnian Serb wartime president Radovan Karadzic and his military commander, Ratko Mladic, guilty of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide in Srebrenica and eventually extended their initial long-term prison sentences to life imprisonment.

The tribunal and courts in the Balkan countries have sentenced about 50 Bosnian Serb wartime officials to more than 700 years in prison for the Srebrenica killings.

Leaders of Serb Republic of Bosnia, or Republika Srpska, however, continue to downplay or even deny the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and hail Karadzic and Mladic as national heroes.

On 10 July 1941, soon after the Soviet forces’ withdrawal and after the German troops entered the North-East Polish town of Jedwabne, the local Polish people began to gather the Jews from the town and the surrounding area in the town square. The Jews were publicly humiliated, and several were killed. A few dozens, including the rabbi Avigdor Bialostocki, were then selected to destroy a Lenin’s monument nearby. The group was then led to an earlier prepared mass grave in a barn where they were murdered and buried together with the Lenin’s bust. The remaining several hundred Jews were led to the same barn. They were doused with diesel before the barn was locked and set on fire. The mass murder was committed by several dozens of local people with many more witnessing it. The German forces in town didn’t take an active part in the pogrom, but they have most likely encouraged it in the spirit of Reinhardt Heydrich’s doctrine about encouraging local populations to take part in pogroms.