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.