On August 18th, 2003, at 2 p.m. in the Białystok Cultural Centre an opening on the exhibition “Who Saves One Life, Saves the Whole World ... Assistance to Jewish People under the German Occupation in the Białystok Voivodship (1941-1944)” prepared by the Branch Public Education Office in Białystok will take place. Mr. Aleksander Kwaśniewski, President of Poland, is an honorary patron of the exhibition
The exhibition presents the resistance of society, Churches and the Polish Underground State against the Nazi programme of the extermination of Jews as well as facts of providing assistance and saving Jews by particular citizens and organisations. The fates of the saving and the saved from the Białystok voivodship were particularly highlighted.
Results of an archival research on the process of saving Jews in the area of current Białystok voivodship conducted by researchers of the Branch Public Education Office in Białystok are the most interesting and fresh elements of the exhibition and of the catalogue that accompanies it. The scientific research conducted in the Institute of National Remembrance will lead to the creation of a complete list of people who saved Jews. The catalogue of the exhibition includes a partial list of people from North-Eastern Poland who received the honorary title “Righteous Among the Nations”.
On of the crucial elements of the exhibition is the Białystok ghetto and its uprising against the Germans which was launched on August 16th, 1943. Besides photographs and maps also documentation coming from the underground ghetto archives has been displayed – of the so called Tamaroff-Tenenbaum archives as well as documents concerning its author who was also a leader of the Białystok ghetto fighters. Moreover, materials concerning Bolesław Filipowski, soldier of the Home Army who saved the archives, were exposed.
The exhibition prepared and exposed on the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the ghetto uprising is an expression of honour and gratitude for those who died and for those who were saved due to the assistance that was provided to them as well as for those who provided that assistance.