In addition to
our visit to the countryside, reunion programs organized by Grodzka Gate and Rootka Tours provided opportunities to explore Lublin's Jewish past first hand.
Guided tours included Old Town, the former Jewish District and Ghetto, Grodzka Gate Theater and the Royal Castle. Workshops helped us
research our Lublin families. Descendants shared stories of their parents and grandparents.We attended concerts, plays and movies directed by Lubliners of Jewish descent.
We met Andrzej Titkow, director of the documentary film,
"THE FAMILY ALBUM," who tells the story of his Jewish ancestors in Lublin including his great-grandfather Marek Arnsztajn, a famous social worker, and his great-grand-mother Franciscan Arnsztajn, a poet and independence activist, during WWI. In the film, the director searches for evidence of Franciscan's conversion to Catholicism in 1939 and explores the mystery of her choice to move into the Warsaw Ghetto, where she died. The film portrays Jewish literati, affluent and progressive Jews who assimilated into Polish culture. Andrzej said he did not know about his Jewish background while growing up. His father was a Communist party dignitary and his mother hid their Jewish roots.
Lublin born filmmaker Sławomir Grünberg directed and produced the documentary film,
"KARSKI AND THE LORDS OF HUMANITY." Jan Karski was a member of the Polish Underground who was dispatched to London and Washington D.C. to tell the Allied forces of Nazi atrocities against the Jews in Poland in 1942. He crossed the wall to the Warsaw Ghetto twice and saw starvation and murder. None of the major politicians, intellectuals or judges he met with believed his reports, including the Jewish U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Felix Frankfurter, who said, "I did not say that he (Karski) is lying; I said that I don’t believe him." Since there was no political or military response to Karski's information, Karski spent the rest of his life convinced he failed the Jews in Poland. President Obama awarded Jan Karski the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 2012.
We met Andrzej Titkow, director of the documentary film, "THE FAMILY ALBUM," who tells the story of his Jewish ancestors in Lublin including his great-grandfather Marek Arnsztajn, a famous social worker, and his great-grand-mother Franciscan Arnsztajn, a poet and independence activist, during WWI. In the film, the director searches for evidence of Franciscan's conversion to Catholicism in 1939 and explores the mystery of her choice to move into the Warsaw Ghetto, where she died. The film portrays Jewish literati, affluent and progressive Jews who assimilated into Polish culture. Andrzej said he did not know about his Jewish background while growing up. His father was a Communist party dignitary and his mother hid their Jewish roots.
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