Authors: Aleksandra Jonas, Karolina Kołodziej, Maciej Kronenberg
Illustrator: Iwona Cała
Year: 2013
Publisher: Literatura
Place of publication: Łódź
Pages: 160
ISBN: 9788376722672
In this guidebook, Łódź is presented to the younger reader as a multi-cultural city where Poles, Germans, Russians and Jews lived together for ages. Its chapters include key moments from the city’s history, the profiles of prominent citizens (such as Jan Karski), a tour of Piotrkowska Street and a tour of film studios, including the famous animation studio Se-ma-for, where the Polish animated children’s series Miś Uszatek (Teddy Drop-Ear) was produced. The publication is mostly based on visual materials, including archival photographs which illustrate the changes the city underwent through decades.
The subject matter of Shoah appears episodically in the guidebook (including subchapters such as “Work is Our Only Way,” “Life in the Ghetto,” “Where the Ghetto Used to Be…” and “The End”). The reader can learn that Germans burnt Łódź’s synagogues in the autumn of 1939 and that one of the largest and longest-standing ghettoes in Europe was created in Łódź’s Old Town and Bałuty, the poorest parts of the city. The book includes a short poem by Abram Koplowicz, a Jewish boy who is mentioned along with Abram Cytryn as someone who pursued his talents despite the grueling conditions in the ghetto. The authors also talk about the Litzmannstadt Ghetto Trail, that is the commemoration of places connected to the wartime fates of the Jewish people, such as the Bałuty Market Square, the memorial train station Radegast or the Survivors’ Park in Łódź, where The Monument to Poles Saving Jews and The Marek Edelman Dialogue Center are located.
Bibliography:
- Chrobak, M., „Po co komu taka uliczka i tramwaj donikąd?”. „Miejsca palimpsestowe” w przewodnikach i spacerownikach dla dzieci, „Annales Universitatis Paedagogicae Cracoviensis. Studia Poetica”, no. III, 2015, pp. 126–142 (pp. 140–141);
- Rybak, K., Obrazowanie Zagłady. Narracje holokaustowe w polskiej literaturze XXI wieku dla dzieci i młodzieży, Warszawa 2023 (p. 11).