Expedition diary: July 16, 2021
On the sixth day of the expedition, we planned many tasks again. The working group went to the surroundings of Izabielin and Padarosk to record informants, and the “leadership” met with the project partners with whom we were going to organize the festival and without whom it would be difficult for us to deal with the issues of tangible and intangible heritage. (Our partners are the private enterprise “Padarosk Estate” and the public organization “Belarusian Voluntary Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments”, more information can be found in the Expedition Archive and For Tourists sections.)
The first major event of the day is a joint stream with Polish colleagues. We talked about the place for the future festival near the Isabielin Catholic church, and the Polish side told about and showed the synagogue in Orla, where the last event of the expedition was to take place.
Mr. Mark Chmielewski talked about the synagogue in Orla. He has been developing Polish-Israeli relations for many years, as well as preserving Jewish heritage. For more photos of well-preserved synagogue interiors, look here.
While we were streaming and looking at the Polish synagogue through the smartphone display, the main part of the group managed to get into the Izabielin synagogue. It was quite difficult because the building is closed. We saw the photos in the working chat and decided to repeat the feat. t should be added here that the Izabielin synagogue now belongs to the “Padarosk Estate” company, and we even had Mr. Director of the company with us! But the director did not have the key to the synagogue. In principle, it has long ceased to be a synagogue… But about this and about our almost legal visit to the synagogue see the video notes and other materials of the Expedition Archive.
We can say that on the sixth day, both groups – Polish and Belarusian – synchronized. In the morning we had synagogues, in the evening, a joint local history online meeting, more about it see below, and in the afternoon, meetings with informants. While working in the field, we talked with father Genadz.
Meanwhile, our friends visited Mrs. Tamara Murawska in Polish Orla and also got acquainted with the old Jewish cemetery on this day.
After lunch, we all had a long and interesting online meeting with local historians and historians. We invited to participate in the discussion a lady librarian from Izabielin, Mikalay Bykhautsaw, the well-known local historian from Vaukavysk, Anton Astapovich, the guardian of monuments, and one of the creators of the Yiddish-Belarusian dictionary, Ales Astravukh, joined us online. Yet another guest came to us from Hrodna. Uladzimir Runge is the truest descendant of the Runge Germans, whose roof tiles still cover the roofs of neighboring villages. Although today only the name of the small village, where the tile factory was, remains from the production itself. For interesting childhood memories of Uladzimir Runge, more photos of modern Izabielin and other curiosities, look the notes from Izabielin.
One of the observations of our group from Izabielin: “There are flip-flopper religious buildings in Izabielin. It is interesting that the Orthodox church is located in the former Uniate church, the Catholic church is located in the former Calvinist cathedral, and the Catholic church burned down in the 70s, with only the parsonage (the priest’s house) remaining.” And the Neptune bar was once a synagogue. It is possible that this virus is transmitted to the surrounding area, as for two evenings in a row, the Padarosk veranda in “Zyalyony Dub” turned from a scientific platform into a dance hall.
On the evening of the sixth day, the creator of the GRAY.BY website Andrei Barowsky (Hrodna) joined us. Not only could you talk to him as an avid collector of musical folklore and information about Belarusian folk musicians, Andrei also passionately plays the accordion. Considering that we were on the Belarusian-Polish border, it was quite natural to play, sing and dance the Polish-Jewish interwar repertoire.
It was these pieces of music that were taken over by village musicians from trendy records. Our retro night ended around midnight.
