WYSTAWY STAŁE

The exhibition "Marek Edelman. The Man" is a story about a hero, who did not want to be a hero, but history made him one. A story of a man, who in his life learned everything about death which is why he was aware of how precious every moment in life was and would always struggle for it.   

Marek Edelman: doctor, socio-political activist, one of the uprising leaders in Warsaw Ghetto, decorated with the Commander's Cross of the Legion of Honour and the title of Doctor Honoris Causa of many universities.

The exhibition not only introduces Marek Edelman himself, but also – takes us through his life. It presents the last 100 years of Polish, European and world history. His views and life attitude can become a kind of moral compass for young people.

The exhibition "Marek Edelman. The Man" is the most important element of the celebration of the Marek Edelman Year.

Curator: Marta Skłodowska

Co-authors of the exhibition: Joanna Podolska (UŁ), Magdalena Kamińska

Texts: Marta Skłodowska, Joanna Podolska (UŁ)

Editors: Joanna Podolska (UŁ)

Graphic design: Krzysztof Iwański

Architect: Magdalena Bałycz

Producer: Marcin Kuropatwa

Coordinator: Magdalena Kamińska

Translation: Dorota Dekiert

Organizer:

Partners:

The exhibition co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Łódź City.

The exhibition "We are eternal trees ... stories from the Łódź Ghetto" in the first part  "Ghetto in 1944" shows the history of the Łódź Ghetto through the most important places and events in its history. The pretext is a large-format map of the "closed district in Łódź" placed on the wall. The exhibition is devoted to the fate of survivors who, after the liquidation of the ghetto, were sent to camps, lived through death marches, and after the war dispersed around the world to build a new life somewhere else.  

The second part of "We are eternal trees ... stories from the Łódź ghetto" presents the biographies of ten out of over 640 Holocaust survivors, whose symbolic Memorial Trees are in the Survivors Park, including Lucjan Dobroszycki, editor of the first edition of the "Chronicle of the Łódź Ghetto", ghetto singer Jankiel Herszkowicz or writer Zenia Larsson, who published several books about the Łódź ghetto in Swedish. Their fate was different. Most of them during World War II found themselves within the Jewish district created by the Germans in February 1940 on the territory of the Old Town and Bałuty. In the Łódź ghetto, they witnessed the death of their loved ones, experienced the despair of parting with their family, hunger, then deportations to Auschwitz and other camps. Others, e.g. Stefan Skotnicki, left Łódź in the first months of the war and did not return here until 1945.

The post-war choices of those who survived were also different: some stayed in Poland and tried to rebuild their lives, others left their homeland to look for their place in another part of Europe or the world. Today, their children and grandchildren speak different languages and live on almost all continents. The Survivors' Park symbolically connects them with Łódź and it shows the triumph of life over death and love over hatred.