The “Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre” Centre is a local government cultural institution based in Lublin. It works towards the preservation of cultural heritage and education. Its function is tied to the symbolic and historical meaning of the Centre’s location in the Grodzka Gate, which used to divide Lublin into its respective Christian and Jewish quarters, as well as to Lublin as a meeting place of cultures, traditions and religions.

Part of the Centre are the House of Words and the Lublin Underground Trail.

The “Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre” Centre is a local government cultural institution based in Lublin. It works towards the preservation of cultural heritage and education. Its function is tied to the symbolic and historical meaning of the Centre’s location in the Grodzka Gate, which used to divide Lublin into its respective Christian and Jewish quarters, as well as to Lublin as a meeting place of cultures, traditions and religions.

Part of the Centre are the House of Words and the Lublin Underground Trail.

Donate!

Donate today to increase Grodzka Gate’s ability to reclaim from oblivion the names, faces and stories of the Jewish Lublin community.

Here is the information you need to send a donation, and let us know which program you want to see develop further:

Institution details:
Ośrodek "Brama Grodzka - Teatr NN"
ul. Grodzka 21
20-112 Lublin

Account details:
IBAN: PL 90 1240 1503 1111 0010 0141 2139
BIC/SWIFT: PKOPPLPW

PayPal:

Bank details:
Bank Pekao S.A.
V. O. w Lublinie
ul. Królewska 1
20-109 Lublin

In 1939, Lublin had nearly 120 thousand citizens, including about 43 thousand Jews. Nazis murdered these Jewish inhabitants during “Operation Reinhard” between March and November 1942 at the Bełżec and Majdanek death camps with thousands, like the children from the Grodzka Street orphanage, executed by bullets. The Nazis dynamited the emptied Jewish district in 1943 including the monumental Maharshal synagogue. By the end of the Shoah, all traces of Jewish Lublin and its people had been annihilated and lost to the world.

Grodzka Gate’s mission is to educate about the rich legacy of the lost Jewish world in Lublin. It is our moral imperative to recover and keep alive their memory. Grodzka Gate is a non-profit municipal institution that runs multiple projects focused on the preservation of Jewish heritage in Lublin and its environs. The municipal resources cover our daily work and keeps the lights on, but achieving our ambitious mission requires additional external funding. Grodzka Gate invites individuals around the world to support the growth of our projects described below.

  1. Lublin. 43000
  2. Oral History Collection: English transcriptions and translations
  3. The Lexicon
  4. 3D simulations: walk the streets of Jewish Lublin

1. "Lublin. 43000"

Identifying 43,000 names and stories is a tall order, and perhaps an impossible dream. We are searching archives here and abroad, listening and reading personal testimonies and collecting all information available to retrieve names and stories.

All information is then uploaded to our advanced database engine, corrected, analyzed, processed and made available to the public. We have already managed to collect over 20 000  names and details.

We need funds to continue the research in archives, transcription and verification of the data. Furthermore we want to test and upgrade database features, edit and merge duplicate entries, and finally translate the interface and the content into English.

2. Oral History Collection: transcriptions and English translations

Since 1997, Grodzka Gate has been capturing the oral testimonies of current and former inhabitants of Lublin and the greater Lublin region. We seek witnesses to history who are willing to record their personal experiences. As a result, we have collected over 3,000 video and audio testimonies with more to come. The interviews are conducted in Polish, English, French and other languages. Each witness adds to our understanding and recovery of facts about prewar Jewish life as well as complexities of our regional history.

Our goal is to have each testimony transcribed, catalogued, mapped, edited and published online. We wish to share our resources and make the Oral History Collection searchable and accessible to a broad audience using the Internet. The language diversity of our interviews is also a barrier to reaching that broad audience. Therefore our greatest need is for text transcriptions and their translations into English for each recording.

3. The Lexicon: English Translations of The "Grodzka Gate - NN Theatre" Center web pages

After almost three decades of activity, The "Grodzka Gate - NN Theatre" Center has collected a vast amount of historical data, documents and stories regarding Lublin and its vicinity’s Jewish past.

The collected data is used as the foundation for developing a rich and informative content. It is made available on the "Grodzka Gate - NN Theatre" Center web pages, and primarily in the “Lexicon Lublin". "Lexicon Lublin" consists of nearly 3,500 entries describing people, places and events connected with Lublin’s past. Currently only a small portion of the Lexicon’s  content is translated into English.

By donating to the translation project,  you help us achieve our goal of sharing the "Grodzka Gate - NN Theatre" Center resources with non-Polish speakers.  

4. 3D simulation: Experience walking the streets of pre-war Jewish Lublin

Technological advancements bring about new creative ways for Grodzka Gate to tell stories, to educate, and to bring to life the research and knowledge we acquire. 3D visualisation of pre-war Jewish Lublin is a unique experience offered to the world wide web community.

We need your support to bring this virtual reality project to completion as it is in its final stage.

Donations will enable creation of tools projecting 3D visualisations and bringing the user to the augmented reality of the pre-war Jewish district in Lublin. The 3D experience will include the use of Virtual Reality glasses.