Almost 80 years after the Jews in the small eastern Polish town of Narewka burned down the local synagogue because it had been desecrated, a plaque has been placed on the site in memory of the town's Jewish community, which was wiped out in the Holocaust.
Early in the war in 1939, like other parts of eastern Poland, Narewka was occupied by Soviet troops. The Red Army desecrated the synagogue by turning it into a storage building, and in 1940, the Jewish residents decided to burn it down. Later, a residential home was built on the site.
After the Germans invaded Soviet-occupied Poland in mid-1941, hundreds of the town's Jews were murdered en masse.
The new plaque tells the story of the synagogue as the center of Jewish life in the town, in Russian, Polish, English and Hebrew. It was symbolically installed ahead of the 10th day of the Hebrew month of Tevet (Dec. 18), which has double significance in Jewish history: It is the day the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem started in 586 BCE, and it is also the day in which the Jewish prayer for the dead, Kaddish, is recited for those who perished in the Holocaust and have no graves.
The event took place after a long collaboration between the Adar Petach Tikva High School in Israel and a local Polish high school.
Tzvika Birenbaum, the principal of the Israeli school, told Israel Hayom that he personally placed the plaque along with the mayor of the town. In early 2019, when students from his school go on the annual educational tour for 12th graders of Holocaust sites in Poland, they will also stop in the town for an official unveiling ceremony.
"Some 80 percent of the town's residents were Jewish, and most of them were murdered on a single day," Birenbaum said. "I recently toured the area with Polish children and told them that a strong person needs to know how to accept those who are different, those who may have a different religion, or a different skin color or customs. In Poland, most children are blond with blue eyes, and when we tour the place, people see that we are different."
Birenbaum said such collaboration between Israeli and Polish schools is not common.
"They want to maintain ties and to preserve the Jewish heritage of the town, and this story about a community that was decimated has moved the locals," he said.
