For almost four hundred years, the Jewish citizens of Nasielsk buried their dead on this ground. They are still here, including relatives of mine, the relatives of many of the people who are gathered with us today, and others who are now scattered around the world.
All the stones marking their resting places were removed by an occupying force, determined to erase the memory of this community. This memorial is here to honor them and to preserve their memory.
Several thousand other Jewish citizens of Nasielsk should be buried here, but are not. They were murdered in places distant from here, and no stones mark their graves. Among them are also relatives of mine and relatives of many of the people who are gathered here today. This memorial is here to honor them, too, and to preserve their memory.
There should have been future generations who would have tended this ground and kept it as a sacred place, Jewish citizens of Nasielsk who would have lived their lives and who would eventually have come to rest here themselves, had they had the chance to be born and to live. But they did not. They are the lost future of this community. The memorial is here to honor them, and to hold a space for the generations that did not come to pass.
The responsibility to tend this ground and keep it sacred has therefore fallen to us.
The memorial has the form of a gate. It is a symbolic gate, representing a passageway of memory, between the past and present, between the dead and the living. And it is also an ordinary gate, inviting those who visit these grounds to enter what I hope will be a place of peace and reflection—indeed, a place of remembrance and reconciliation.
The design of this gate incorporates windows from Nasielsk’s great synagogue, which stood from the 1880s until shortly after the war. As many of you know, the synagogue was demolished in 1952, and its materials were distributed to people here in town to repair wartime damage. Pieces of the Nasielsk synagogue are now integrated into many of the homes around us here, and I can think of no more profound metaphor for the presence of Jewish life in Poland than the fact that almost every home here contains a piece of the synagogue. And so, after the demolition of the synagogue in the 1950s, its windows were incorporated into one private home, where they remained for 65 years. In this strange way they were preserved.
Like the bricks of the synagogue and these windows, the history and memory of Nasielsk’s Jewish citizens have been an integral part of the town since the war, but a history often kept silent, hidden, or unrecognized, hidden in plain sight.
This memorial is composed of windows to let in the light and make this history visible. It is in the form of a gate, so that everyone who comes here knows they are welcome to enter, to reflect and to remember. And it stands now as a symbol of a once-vibrant community. It honors the dead, it memorializes the murdered, and it holds a place for the missing, as a reminder and a lesson for all the generations to come.
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