Opening of the CEE National Week: Polish exhibition and reception


Lundi 28.01.19 20:00


Foyer Dijver
Dijver, Bruges campus
Dijver 11
8000 Bruges

The Central-Eastern European National Week Organizational Team has a pleasure to invite the College community to the official opening of the Polish exhibition “On your soil I was destined to sing the song of your land" on Monday, 28 January 2019 at 20:00, in the Foyer of Dijver. The exhibition was prepared by the Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in World War II in Markowa and has been organized with the help of the Permanent Representation of the Republic of Poland to the European Union. It tells the stories of the Polish Jews from Podkarpacie, the south-eastern region of Poland. The event will be accompanied by a classical music recital and a tasting of Polish ecological food specialties provided by the Polish Ecology Association.

Excerpt from the official description of the exhibition:

Arthur MILLER, an outstanding novelist and life partner of Marylin MONROE, a Nobel Prize winner in nuclear physics, Isidor Isaac RABI, or Freud’s associate Abraham BRILL – these are just a few of the famous people presented at the exhibition, who share not only international success, but also origin: being Jewish and at the same time coming from Podkarpacie,

For most of them, this region was nothing more than a country of ancestors or a country of their childhood, often perceived from the perspective of the Holocaust as a ‘lost paradise’, but also as a land stained with blood. Most of them, in the era of migration, make their careers abroad, and only few decide to become permanently connected with Podkarpacie. However, even those few are not able to make their dream come true: Nachum STERNHEIM and his family are killed during the German occupation in Rzeszów, and Kalman SEGAL and Roman HARTE leave the country after the war due to growing discrimination and missing career prospects.

The presented characters, apart from their Jewish and Podkarpacie origins, have one more thing in common: their passion and pursuit of their dreams. Presented biographies are the history of fighting against the adversities of fate and the history of turning defeats into success. Due to their titanic work, their accomplishments are known to almost everyone. It is a huge loss that, paraphrasing the title quote from the poem by Berish WEINSTEIN, despite their ties with the Podkarpacie region, these people ‘were destined to sing the song on another, not Podkarpacie, land’.

For more information, please contact kamila.sotomska [at] (Kamila SOTOMSKA).