The project “Polish Righteous – Recalling Forgotten History” created by the Museum of the History of Polish Jews has recently received subsidy from the European Union, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland, the Civic Initiatives Fund and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. These resources, proving that the Righteous Among the Nations and initiatives for their commemoration have become an important element of the Polish collective memory and consciousness – will enable a further development of the portal.

The support of the EU program “Europe for Citizens” will allow the portal www.sprawiedliwi.org.pl  to be enriched with new information, audio and video materials about 130 families of Polish Righteous. The materials will be processed as part of the project of digitizing audio-visual resources, carried out by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Help of the Minister of Foreign Affairs as part of the program “Promotion of Knowledge about Poland” will make it possible to conduct further interviews with the Righteous and the Rescued, as well as to translate them into English. Until the end of this year about 50 new interviews will be conducted and presented on the portal.

Thanks to the support given by the Civic Initiatives Fund to the project “Righteous in Polish Schools”, the portal www.sprawiedliwi.org.pl will publish new educational materials, devoted to subjects such as rescuing Jews by Poles and Polish-Jewish relations during the Second World War. The project “Righteous in Polish Schools” will last until the end of 2010. Its main goal is to document the accounts that have not yet been recorded, but mainly to involve the Righteous from small Polish towns in the life of their local communities and in the process of educating young people. The schools will prepare meetings with the Righteous, such events will constitute a part of the “Days of the Righteous”. All teachers interested in organizing such “Days of the Righteous” in their schools – which will mainly consist of meetings with the Righteous and other forms of commemorating their heroism – are asked to contact Ewa Opawska: eopawska@jewishmuseum.org.pl. 

The portal “Polish Righteous” is a modern, bilingual archive (maintained in Polish and English), constituting a compendium of knowledge about the Polish Righteous. It offers its users access to a rich collection of audio-visual materials, interviews with the Righteous, biographical notes, iconographic material, archival photographs and case studies. The main goal of the project is to present the stories of Poles rescuing Jews during the war and to make the memory about their heroic acts a permanent element of social consciousness. The heroes of the Second World War had been forgotten for a long time – the  goal of the project “Polish Righteous – Recalling Forgotten History” is to preserve and spread knowledge about their courageous deeds.

The project is co-financed by the Ministry of Polish Culture and Heritage