The “Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre” Centre in Lublin is a local government cultural institution. 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 in Lublin is a local government cultural institution. 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.

NN Theatre
March 16th.

March 16th.

Mystery of Light and Darkness

Commemoration of Podzamcze ghetto liquidation

In the night of 16th/17th March, 1942 an operation of Podzamcze ghetto liquidation began. At that time first transport of 1,400 people to the Bełżec death camp departed. Until the middle of April, 1942 more than 28,000 of Jewish people were sent there. This date is considered as a beginning of Operation Reinhard – the extermination of Jewish people in the General Government area.

To commemorate the victims of the Extermination, every year the „Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre" Centre performs the Mystery of Light and Darkness. We start the Mystery in evening, in Grodzka Gate, reading hundreds of names of former inhabitants of the Jewish quarter, displaced to Majdan Tatarski, whose names were put on a list in 1942.

Young people and their teachers from schools of Lublin as well as ordinary inhabitants of our city, and all people who are willing to do it, can recite names from the list.

The culminating point of this event is a blackout of entire Podzamcze area – a former place of Jewish quarter. In this darkness there is only one lamp shining. This is the unique lamp saved from the Jewish town, the "Lamp of Memory". On the other side of the Grodzka Gate, in the Old City, which once was a Christian quarter – the light is still on. In this way each side of the Gate becomes one space, very different from another – a space of light and a space of darkness.

March 24th.

March 24th.

March of Memory

Commemoration of the Jewish Orphanage liquidation

When in March 1942 the Podzamcze ghetto was liquidated, more than a hundred of children from the Jewish Orphanage in 11 Grodzka Street was taken by trucks to meadows, located near a sand mine in Majdan Tatarski, and murdered there. Three of their wardens, who refused to abandon children: Anna Taubenfeld, Chana Kuperberg and Mrs. Rechtman died with them. To commemorate the orphanage liquidation every year we organize a March of Memory on March 24th, a probable date of children and their wardens death. We meet outside the former orphanage building to march towards Majdan Tatarski – the place where the victims were murdered.

April 19th.

April 19th.

Letters to Henio

Day of Holocaust Remembrance and Counteracting Crimes against Humanity

April 19th is celebrated in Polish schools as a Day of Holocaust Remembrance and Counteracting Crimes against Humanity. Every year on this day the “Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre” Centre carries on the “Letters to Henio” project.

Henio Żytomirsk was a Jewish boy born in 1933 in Lublin. In 1941 Henio, together with all his family, had to leave the building they used to live in – on 3 Szewska Street – and move to the ghetto, to 11 Kowalska Street. In the spring of 1942 the liquidation of Lublin ghetto began. On a postcard, dated to May 22nd of 1942, Shmuel Żytomirski, Henio’s father, wrote: “Me and Henio are together”. In the last letter from March 19th of 1943 he writes only about himself, which probably means that at that time his only son – Henio – was already dead.

In a framework of the “Letters to Henio” project we undertake a series of activities in order to show to city’s inhabitants, especially to students of Lublin schools, the Extermination of Jews of Lublin, using as an example a life story of one little boy.

School youth take part in educational workshops, and by dint of it – gets to know Henio’s story in the context of everyday life in Polish-Jewish city of Lublin. By the end of the workshop young people write letters to Henio Żytomirski. Those letters are put in the NN Theatre mailbox, placed on April 19th on 64 Krakowskie Przedmieście Street. This place is the spot, where in 1939 the very last picture of Henio was taken. We invite also a random passers, who in the city space can listen to Henio’s story from loudspeakers, to write a letter to him.

After sending those letter, participants go for a walk across the city, following Henio’s traces, visiting spots related to his life such as: his family house on 3 Szewska Street and the tenement house on 11 Kowalska Street, where Henio lived with his family after the establishment of a ghetto. This walk ends while participants reach the last lantern of Jewish town on Podwale Street.