Chairman of the Citizens’ Committee for Remembrance of the Jews of Otwock and Karczew was interviewed by Leora Tec for the Neshoma Project.
The Neshoma Project: Conversations with Poles Rescuing Jewish Memory was created by Leora Tec in cooperation with Brama Grodzka-Teatr NN. It is a collection of video conversations that she had with non-Jewish Poles today who are working to preserve Jewish memory.
You may watch the interview with Zbigniew Nosowski here. It was recorded on 19 November, 2019.
Leora Tec, the founder and creator of The Neshoma Project, is the founder and director of Bridge To Poland, an organization she founded to delve into nuanced questions of memory, commemoration, suffering, forgiveness and identity as they relate to the history of Jews in Poland. Bridge To Poland seeks to highlight, through writing, film, workshops, presentations, research projects and unique travel experiences, in partnership with Brama Grodzka-Teatr NN in Lublin, Poland, how non-Jewish Poles are commemorating Jewish life in Poland today.
Leora is the daughter of Holocaust survivor and Holocaust scholar Nechama Tec, who was born in Lublin, Poland in 1931. Leora is the American Ambassador and Special Projects Partner to Brama Grodzka-Teatr-NN and serves on the Board of the American Association for Polish Jewish Studies. She holds a B.A. from Wellesley College and a J.D./ LL.M from Duke University School of Law. In her spare time, Leora enjoys improvisational comedy, learning languages and writing.
Grateful to have received the Mary Elvira Stevens Traveling Fellowship in 2018 from Wellesley College to embark upon this project, Leora traveled to Poland to begin interviewing those whom she calls, “Rescuers of Memory.” This is how she presented Zbigniew Nosowski:
“He has an interesting perspective on Jewish remembrance: He is very much motivated by his Catholic faith, perhaps the only one of my interviewees to express this as their impetus for Jewish remembrance.
This interview was special to me because my mother spent part of World War II passing as a Catholic girl in Otwock, which is where Zbigniew does his work of remembrance. Zbigniew Nosowski took me into the church where my mother used to go to sneak bread because she was hungry.
I had been there before with Witek Dąbrowski, but this time I learned that priests in that church saved Jews during the war. I wonder if my mother ever crossed paths with those priests? If she did, they surely would not have suspected that she was Jewish.”
Other interviews that are part of The Neshoma Project are available here.
