Summary of the year 2023

January saw the first German screening of the film "Edge of Light" documenting the activities of volunteers in Dariusz Popiela's "People, Not Numbers" project in Czarny Dunajec. The screening from the presence of dozens of viewers took place on January 23 at the Central-Kino cinema in Hof, northern Bavaria.

In February, the results of the Dialogue Forum Foundation's grant competitions for 2023 were announced. The committee awarded me a grant for the project "Digital Archive of the Jews of Czarny Dunajec," which resulted in the creation of the website jewishczarnydunajec.pl.

In April, at the invitation of the Matte Asher regional government in northern Israel, I visited as a representative of Czarny Dunajec to deepen Polish-Israeli relations at the local level. I took part in the official Holocaust Remembrance Day celebration at the Ghetto Fighters' House Museum in Lohamei Hagetaot, the Holocaust Remembrance March, and the commemoration at the Fighters Cemetery. After the screening of the film "Edge of Light" at kibbutz Adamit, I talked about our activities in Czarny Dunajec.

In Kiryat Ono I also met with Mrs. Tova Achidov, the wife of Ari Achidov, who died in 1996, and who was born in Czarny Dunajec before the war as Leib Kleinzahler.

In May, a delegation from the Matte Asher region of Israel came to Czarny Dunajec for another visit.

In June, during the National Conference of Dialogue Leaders in Wiązowna, I spoke about the film "Edge of Light" together with director Wojciech Szumowski and Dr. Karolina Panz.

In August, I co-organized the commemoration of the 81st anniversary of the Holocaust of the Jews of Czarny Dunajec and the surrounding area. As part of the celebration, a promotional meeting of the jewishczarnydunajec.pl website was held, and descendants from abroad also participated online.

After the launch of the site, new materials began to arrive: documents, photos, but also stories and questions from descendants of Jews from Czarny Dunajec who live abroad. The first document in the digital archive was Chaim Henry Horowitz's birth certificate from 1914. It was also the first document to be physically donated to the future exhibition of the Jews of Czarny Dunajec.

In September, I took part in the 25th birthday party of the Dialogue Forum Foundation at the Polish Theater in Warsaw. It was also an opportunity to promote the site.

In November, during a visit to the Jewish cemetery in Brzesko, I learned about an ohel with the graves of the Lipschitz rabbis. It turned out to be a family with Rabbi Lipschütz of Czarny Dunajec, whose story I described on the site.