2009-09-23
Warsaw, 2009-09-26
Historia Muzeo de Polaj Judoj – that’s how you say “Museum of the History of Polish Jews” in Esperanto. The fascinating concept of the Esperanto language was the topic of a series of workshops organised by the Museum within the 13th Warsaw Science Festival.
Two instructors from the Museum Educational Centre – Zofia Mioduszewska and Zofia Wóycicka – started each workshop with a discussion: what is communication and can people communicate without words? Exercises in conveying basic messages using only gestures showed that it is not that simple. So how did the town of Białystok function where before World War II residents spoke seven different languages – Polish, Yiddish, Russian, Belarusian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian and German? It is not an accident that the creator of the Esperanto international language Ludwik Zamenhof came from that town. At the age of 15, Zamenhof moved to Warsaw and settled only 100 metres away from the site where two and a half years from today the Museum of the History of Polish Jews will be standing. Although later he became an ophthalmologist, languages remained his true passion. He published the first Esperanto learning guidebook in 1887. Thanks to Łukasz Żebrowski and Irmina Szustak from the Polish Esperanto Association, participants in the workshops became familiar with the basics of Esperanto and solved a few linguistic puzzles. If “to cook” is kuiri in Esperanto, how will one say “a cook”? Kuiristo. And “a kitchen”? Kuirejo. And if “a house” is domo, then what does domaĉo mean?
During the second part of each workshop, participating children were helped by graphic artists and architects Marcin Urbanek, Łukasz Mieszkowski and Katarzyna Stanny in making patterns of graffiti that expressed the idea of Esperanto and a Polish-Esperanto pictionary. They created their works directly on the fence separating the Museum construction site from Zamenhof Street. Their creations were left up on the fence over the weekend for everyone to admire.
Saturday workshops took place at Nowolipki Arts Club and were attended by fifth grade students of the Elementary School no. 205 at Spartańska Street, second grade students of the Public Junior High School of the Piarist Order College at Drewniana Street and nine children accompanied by parents.
Read the report in esperanto>>
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