Dr. Hatte Blejer, Trips to Ancestral Villages and Towns in Poland and Lessons Learned from Local Research

Dr. Blejer will highlight how the activities of last summer are part of the preservation of Jewish heritage in Poland and fit beautifully into and rely upon the work of a genealogist. She will show clips from the commemorative ceremony which featured a local non-Jewish 18-person klezmer orchestra from Sejny. She will describe the experience of meeting local non-Jewish activists in Grajewo, Krynki, and Kalvarija – people who work to preserve the Jewish heritage of their town – and the somber experience of traveling with her Israeli cousins to the site of a mass murder in Jedwabne, the town the book Neighbors by Jan Gross is based upon. The group she led visited other Jewish cemeteries, including Bialystok, Seirijai (Sereje), Kalvarija, Lazdijai, Jedwabne, and Krynki. They attended the 80th anniversary of the Bialystok Ghetto Uprising where they heard Anthony Blinken’s mother speak. They also visited one of the only remaining wooden mosques in Poland, in Krynki, as well as the newly restored wooden synagogue in Ziezmariai. Dr. Blejer will also talk about future plans for her project. This talk will be of interest to anyone who wants to research and preserve the memory of their ancestral town’s Jewish community.

Biography: In August 2023, Dr. Blejer led her most ambitious trip to Poland and Lithuania, following trips in 2012, 2017, 2018, and 2019. On this trip she traveled with a dozen descendants of families from Przerosl, the majority of whom were cousins to her, and most of whom she got to know through her genealogy research of the past 15 years. The high point of the 11-day trip was the unveiling of a large informational sign at the cemetery, telling the story of the Jewish community of Przerosl, and a commemorative ceremony for the former Jewish community. Speakers included non-Jewish town leaders as well as Jewish descendants from France, the U.S., and Israel. The ceremony was televised on Bialystok TV. This linked webpage gives multilingual versions of the Polish content of the informational sign (English, French, Hebrew) which is linked to the physical sign by a “QR code.”

*There is ample free street parking on Sunday on surrounding streets.  Limited handicap parking is available in the rear of the synagogue.  If you need to park in the synagogue parking lot, please let us know RSVP. The entrance to the synagogue is from the alley behind the building. Ring the buzzer on the parking lot gate.