Sefer Falenic

Before the World War II Falenica was the center of the Letnisko Falenica municipality, which extended over the areas from Wawer to Świder and was inhabited by a multicultural community, a large part of which were Jews. After the outbreak of the World War II, the Poles of Jewish origin were deprived of their homes and all rights by the Nazi authorities. Crammed together in the ghetto, forced to live in increasingly difficult conditions, they were oppressed and deprived of their lives. This drama lasted almost two years. Finally, on August 20, 1942, those who had managed to survive in the ghetto were taken to the Treblinka extermination camp and murdered. Only a few were saved, and the traces of their lives became obliterated.

In the 1960s, on the initiative of pre-war Jewish residents, a book of remembrance – Sefer Falenic – was created under the editorship of Dawid Sztokfisz. Those who left Poland before the outbreak of the World War II, and those who miraculously survived, wrote down their Falenica memories in it. There are such books on many Polish cities and towns. They were written out of the need to restore the memory of people and places that had been irretrievably destroyed. [source: Lidia Głażewska-Dańko, one of the editors of the Polish translation of the Sefer Falenic]

The project is carried out by the European Cultural Institute. The translation of extensive excerpts from the book into Yiddish was financed by the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute, the Warsaw Ghetto Museum and the Wawer District Office of the capital Warsaw. The translation from Yiddish was done by Magdalena Siek, the content and linguistic advice was provided by Prof. Dr. hab. Monika Adamczyk-Garbow