Inclusive commemoration of Sura Teller in Pawlichy

events Programme

In May 2025, as part of the ReActMem project, we organized an event in Pawlichy (Lublin Province) dedicated to the memory of Sura Teller – a young Jewish girl born on March 13, 1923 in Stare Króle, murdered during the Holocaust. Her grave, unmarked for decades, was indicated by the village residents, providing oral testimonies from their ancestors.

The event in Pawlichy was a continuation of activities initiated in 2021. It was then that we visited this place for the first time. In 2023, together with local youth and thanks to the support of the Jewish Historical Institute Association, we made and placed a symbolic matzevah there. The May meeting in 2025 – organized in cooperation with the Municipal Cultural Center in Księżpol – was open and gathered many residents of Księżpol and the surrounding towns.

The meeting began at the Municipal Cultural Centre in Księżpole, where we talked about the history of Sura and how we can work with local memory today – not through ready-made forms, but through joint actions, listening and presence. The residents shared their memories, accounts from the war, the history of their own families, and difficult and often silenced experiences. Some of these accounts concerned the fate of Sura Teller, while others indicated additional, still uncommemorated burial sites from the war in this area, which we intend to investigate in the future.

Then we went to the burial site, where symbolic commemorative activities prepared by invited artists took place: Anna Schapiro from Berlin and Marcin Król from Krakow. Together with them, the participants took part in simple, spontaneous gestures of memory – tidying up the space, praying, saying things, arranging stones marking the symbolic boundaries of the grave.

The event in Pawlichy shows that memory can be alive and present here and now – if we create space for it. Such activities are especially important in local communities, where the past was difficult and the need to work through it together is great. The ReActMem project creates a framework for such meetings, combining art, activism, education and intercultural dialogue.

📸Filip Szulc