Trial of Jewish Heritage opened in Poland

thenews.pl
20.06.2008

The Trial of Jewish Heritage Places connected with the history of Polish Jews from the north-western city of Bialystok has been opened today.

The trial includes places such as the house of Ludwik Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto or the former Hebrew middle-school.

The majority of Jewish inhabitants of Bialystok died in concentration camps or mass executions in the Bialystok ghetto during WWII.
Currently there is approximately a dozen of Jews living in Bialystok.

The creators of the trial, predominantly young people from the Foundation of the University of Bialystok, also issued a guidebook in
which people and places related to the trial are described in more detail. Readers are familiarised with the likes of Icchok Malmed,
hanged for dousing a German soldier with acid, or the recently deceased Sonja Nejman, aka Nora Ney, dubbed the Polish Greta Garbo.

Several pages in the guidebook are devoted he most prominent Jew of Bialystok, Ludwik Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, and the Jakub
Szapiro, the founder of the Bialystok Association of Esperanto Speakers.

Readers are also informed that the municipal hospital was formerly the seat of one of the most excellent Hebrew middle-schools in the
pre-war Poland, which contributed vastly to the revival of the language, and whose graduates, including Icchak Shamir, who was twice
the prime minister of Israel, provided intellectual potential for the independent Jewish state.