POLIN Reagin Room :”Czarna torebka” [Black Handbag] by Agata Tuszyńska, Osnova Publishing

Premiere: 19 April 2023

A short story about Dela’s grandmother’s inheritance – a black envelope handbag. With her daughter Halinka, Dela Goldstein exits the ghetto with the handbag. She was persuaded to leave by her brother-in-law, a Pole, who helped them get out. On the other side of the ghetto walls, Dela Goldstein becomes Zofia Zmiałowska; she learns her new life story by heart. Tuszyńska reconstructs her grandmother’s wartime experience based on items in her handbag, which survived by some miracle (Dela’s grandmother died at the very end of the war). These items included a picture of Jesus, a baptismal certificate, a date book for 1941 with notes in different colours with addresses, mainly in Żoliborz – that is where Dela lived before the war, recipes for Polish dishes, letters, stamps with Hitler, a sheet with the lyrics of a Polish song. As the author writes, it is all a camouflage, a Jewish toolkit with lifesaving props.

A personal family story will be illustrated with photographs of items from the handbag.

Detailed information on the event can be found at:  https://polin.pl/en/thou-shalt-not-be-indifferent-program