Katarzyna Meller

- a volunteer in the Galicia Museum in Kraków

The Galicia Museum in Kraków is supported by many volunteers. Dr. Katarzyna Suszkiewicz organises visits, for them, to various places in Poland. With the help of our World Society Vice-President Alon Goldman, in July 2024, they visited Częstochowa.

One of those volunteers, Katarzyn Meller, describes her visit to our home city:

This summer, Częstochowa, a beautiful city in the historical Galicia region, was the destination for our group of volunteers. Our guide, Piotr Pałgan from the Częstochowa Museum, showed us many of the city’s most important places.

We visited the old post office building, the main square
and the two kilometre Aleja which runs through the centre of city.

We then went to the Jasna Góra Monastery which was built in 12th century. In 1650-1655, it played an important role during the war between Sweden and Poland. To this day Monastery is a place of many pilgrimages to the unique painting of the Black Madonna. We visited the Basilica and the tower that allowed us to see a beautiful view of Częstochowa from above.

After a lunch break, we walked down the Aleja to see more of the Jewish heritage in Częstochowa. We had learnt about the city before and during WW II and what it was like to live there as a Jew. Among other sites, Piotr showed us the house of famous violinist Bronisław Huberman. He also about the impact that the Jewish community had on the city’s development.

We then crossed the Aleja what used to be a border of the Częstochowa ghetto created in 1941. We had a chance to enter the hiding place created by Hersz Frajman in his basement, where twenty-seven people found a shelter during the liquidation of the ghetto. We learned more about him and his family.

We finished our trip by visiting the Częstochowa Jewish Museum to see the exhibition and learn about the Jewish history of the city. We saw many interesting photographs and exhibits depicting the life and fate of the Jewish residents of Częstochowa. We also viewed a model of the Częstochowa New Synagogue that was destroyed during World War II.