On July 28th a group of Young Ambassadors of Tolerance in the early morning set off from under the Synagogue in Sącz into a two-day trip in the footsteps of Jewish community of the region and the Lesser Poland. First we visited Tarnów, where we were guided by Mr. Adam Bartosz, for many ears the director of the Regional Museum in Tarnów and an expert on local history.

From there we went to Leżajsk, where we visited the old JEwish cemetery and the ohel of the tzaddik from Leżajsk – one of the most famous saint men of the Jewish history of Europe.

Next stop on our route was Bełżec – memorial-museum, created at the site of the former death camp, where in three transports in August 1942 all of the Jewish citizens of Sądecczyzna were taken after the liquidation of the Nowy Sącz ghetto. The Nazis, when liquidating the camp, tried to erase all traces of its existence, however thanks to the museum historians, including the late lamented Robert Kuwałek, it was possible to create an incredible, moving monument of hundreds of thousand people murdered here.

After a short stop in Zamość and a night spent in Lublin, we started the second day of our trip by visiting the Brama Grodzka, NN Theatre in Lublin – an amazing place, that in an incfredible way takes care to preserve the memory of the Jewish community of the city and the region.

The last stop of our trip was the POLIN Museum of Jewish History in Warsaw, where we got swallowed by the exhibition for several hours. The permanent exhibition, describing the almost thousand-year-long history of Polish-Jewish coexistence in our country is incredibly complex and rich. After that all that was left was the late come back to Nowy Sącz.

The trip left us with a lot of information and knowledge, but also of emotions and reflections about the tragic events, that the Jewish community of our region had to face.