Today a museum and theater, Grodzka Gate traditionally was the border between Christian and Jewish Lublin. While it would be easy to thus interpret the location as a symbol of division, keeping the two groups separated, our guide Piotr stressed just the opposite - Grodzka Gate was a place where different cultures intersected, coexisted, and lived peacefully.

The raw transcript of our interview with Piotr Choros, Coordinator of the Civil Academy program at Grodzka Gate, follows:

TLP: Please, tell us about Grodzka Gate. What can you tell us about Grodzka Gate, its meaning and significance?

Piotr: What one can say about Grodzka Gate in Lublin is that it is one of the most important places on the map of this city, not only on the urban map but also on the map of the history of this town, on the map of its communities. For hundreds of years it was a place through which the two communities of this City connected with each other. Polish community and Jewish community, they both created this City. For hundreds of years the Grodzka Gate was Lublin's central connection of those two separate worlds which were functioning until the Second World War. The "Grodzka Gate Theatre Centre" was created to remind us about part of the population which does not exist anymore, about the city which was destroyed, about the Jewish community, about Jews who were living in Lublin before the war.

Historically, the Gate as a crossing or a traverse, connecting these two societies in Lublin, was so situated that it was the only place where these two towns came in contact... Historically, people who wanted to go from one community to the other had to come this way and were recognized in the communities they entered as strangers, because the Jews and the Christians of Lublin differed not only in faith, not only in their views of the world, but also physically. We heard stories about the people who, in this gate, when they were crossing from one world to the other, changed clothes in order to look more like people in the world they were entering. Today, the meaning and function of the Grodzka Gate and the Institution which is built around it are designed for the current inhabitants of Lublin. Entering the Gate, talking to people who are working at this Institution, looking at the exhibits, seeing what we are doing here, we hope that people open their eyes to that which is no longer here, behind that Gate, around the Castle. To see a population completely different from that which is now in Lublin. A community which spoke a completely different language, had a different faith, observed holidays in a different way. And we hope that they would understand that the history of that community is also their history. That this community also contributed to the building of their city and had a great influence on how this city functions today.

TLP: I would like to ask you about Chaim's story.

Piotr: I would like to start from the beginning - how did we discover this story? A couple of years ago, a middle-aged lady, a Jewess from Israel, Meta Zytomirska, visited our Grodzka Gate Center. Having seen the exhibits, on return home she sent us a photo album with the photographs of her cousin Chaim (Henio) Zytomirski who was born in Lublin to a relatively well off family assimilated with Christian Poles. The family had a photo camera, and before the war took many pictures of their son over the course of trips, birthdays, occasions, etc. Here are the photographs. She (Ms. Zytomirska) was born in Palestine as her father, the brother of Chaim's father, left for Palestine before the war. She found those photographs among the correspondence between the brothers. She sent us the photographs with the annotations, like: "Here is Henio's first birthday, here he is on the walk." The last photograph was taken in the summer of 1939 on Krakowskie Przedmiescie Street, in front of the building, which still exists. At that time Henio was seven years old, a boy getting ready to go to the first grade of the primary school. This was to happen on the first of September, which was also the first day of the war, so he never went to school. He lived two years more; he survived the ghetto in Lublin, was imprisoned together with his father in the concentration camp in Majdanek, and was killed by Nazis in the gas chamber. He died in 1941. Meta Zytomirska also sent us his father's letters. He lived much longer as the Nazis exploited some of the prisoners to work outside the camp and he managed to send his letters through the help of some Poles to his brother in Palestine. In one of the letters he describes the moment (Henio's mother did not live at that time) in which, during the camp selection, his son was separated from him and he saw his nine-year old boy led together with women to the gas chamber. He describes in this letter the moment in which he knew that his son was in the same group that was being led to death.

Every year on this particular day we try to remember that event. It is not that we are forgetting the six million murdered Jews or forty thousand Jews who lived in Lublin, but these are big numbers and it is very difficult to imagine forty thousand victims, to say nothing of six million. We place an enlarged photograph of Henio Zytomirski, his last photograph, on the place where it was taken, we provide a small table, paper, ball-point pens, and a little box, asking people to stop by for a couple of seconds, look at the picture, and on that day remember only the name of this young boy who was an innocent victim of the Holocaust.

TLP: Why is it important to remember him?

Piotr: To our minds it is very important to remember this little boy, Chaim Zytomirski, because the number of victims from the war is so staggering that it is hard to comprehend. Particularly when you read of six million murdered Jews, of millions of other victims, of people who did not survive the war, the numbers are nameless, impossible to comprehend in one's mind. At least, I am unable to do so. When we remind others of one person, known by his name, showing his photograph, we want to stress that it was people who died and not the statistics. I think Nazis would very much like to think of their crimes only as statistics. But we want to bring out from this all of the individuals whom we can recognize, the people whose names we know, the people like us. They had their families, their history. But most important, each of them had his own face and it is the face which we would like to show. In Lublin, we show the face of Henio, his history; we know where he lived before the war and during the war. Of course it is important that people should remember those horrendous numbers, but they should remember also this little boy. Perhaps someone's son or daughter is as old now as he was then. That way, I think it may be easier to come to terms with this awful tragedy.

TLP: What gives you hope for the future of humanity?

Piotr: In my everyday work I am growing convinced that what happened here dozens of years ago will not happen here again. I work with young people from Lublin who are about ten years younger than myself. I meet every week with dozens of them, sometimes hundreds. With some I have been working for a year or longer. Watching them, talking to them.

I believe that the tragedy that happened here will not repeat itself again because these young people have a different way of looking at life. I see in this some effect of my work and of course I am very happy about it. Working with them, explaining to them the history of this town I can see a change that takes place within them, a firm realization and firm belief that people who speak another language or believe in another God are still like them and not a threat, with whom you have to quarrel or even kill.