Case study no. & title:
203. ‘The Festival of Three Cultures’ – promoting dialogue between the Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish believers (1998-), Włodawa, Poland

Keywords

2. Author information:
2.1 Author’s Name
Joanna Wawrzyniak

2.2 Institutional Affiliation and Contact Details:
Warsaw University
Institute of Sociology (PhD student)
00-324 Warsaw
ul. Karowa 18
Poland

E-mail: kochanowiczjoanna@wp.poczta.pl

2.3 Date recorded
22/01/2001

3. Good Practice Information Sheet
3.1 Local Level Good Practice:
Organisation of an annual multi-cultural festival to celebrate the town’s past and present Jewish, Orthodox, and Catholic communities.

3.2 Location:
Włodawa, Eastern Poland, near the Ukrainian and Belarussian border.

3.3 Minority/Target Groups:
Minority: Jews, Ukrainians. Target groups: the symbolic Jewish minority; and the orthodox minority in Włodawa.

3.4 Major Actors Involved

3.5 Budget allocated by local government authorities and/or by other actors
The cost of the most recent Festival was around 86,000 PLN.

3.6 Timeframe
The initiative was first proposed in 1995, and that year it was put into practice for the first time, but later it was abandoned for three years. In 1998 it was proposed once again (after a new director of the local museum – the main organiser of the Festival - was appointed), and it is expected to continue for an undetermined time.

3.7 Local level good practice relation to national level ethnic policy
The local level good practice is an entirely local level initiative, but it operates within the framework of national legislation in which the rights and obligations of local self-governments are defined.

4. Good Practice Description
Background
The initiative takes place at Włodawa, a town of around 15,000 inhabitants, situated at the Polish-Ukrainian-Belorussian border. Historically, Włodawa was inhabited by a large Jewish community (over 60% of the local population before the Second World War), and also by Orthodox and Catholic citizens. At the moment, the town itself is mainly inhabited by Catholic Poles, and a small orthodox community, but in some of the neighboring small villages the proportion of Orthodox people relative to Catholics is half-and-half. The Jews were almost all murdered during the War in an annihilation camp built in the nearby Sobibór.

The ethnicity of the orthodox community is a complicated issue. The official website of Włodawa mentions around 250 Ukrainian families living in the town and its neighborhood at the moment, and the local orthodox priest (from the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church [Polski Autokefaliczny Kościół Prawosławny]) gives an approximate number of 140 active believers. But the identification with the orthodox religion does not automatically mean an auto-identification with the Ukrainian ethnicity (and vice versa). Before the War, the members of the orthodox community of the town Włodawa and its neighboring villages would probably either identify as people of Ukrainian ethnic origin or call themselves "the local people". The latter answer was common among uneducated peasants in Eastern Poland who differed from the ethnic (and catholic) majority in terms of dialect and religion.

Moreover, under the communist regime all the Ukrainians from Poland were either deported to the USSR (around 500,000 people) or subjected to repression and forced polonization. It resulted in the disappearance of the Ukrainian culture and language from the Polish territories. At that time participation in the Orthodox or Greek-Catholic religion also decreased. It was only in 1989 that a true revival of the Ukrainian traditions became possible. Until that moment a part of the Ukrainian-origin population had already become assimilated, therefore any clear-cut criteria determining the size of the Ukrainian minority in Poland is now virtually non-existent (depending on a source, estimations vary from 70,000 to 500,000 for the whole of Poland). Despite these definitional difficulties, the fact is that people, especially in the villages neighboring Włodawa, still talk to each other in a local dialect close to the Ukrainian language, and adhere to the eastern religious tradition. This ethnic group, along with the symbolic Jewish minority, is the main target of the town’s policy.

The town’s development strategy
A strategy by the local authorities (elected in 1998) is to recreate the town’s identity on the basis of its multicultural history. The place is now called Włodawa: a Town of Three Cultures. The historical buildings of three temples (Orthodox, Catholic, and Jewish) are depicted on the town’s logo. The strategy has three important dimensions. The first is educational and based on the assumption that it is necessary to teach the history of the town’s multicultural past, and to preserve the town’s history in the era of globalization. This dimension is very important, because under the communist regime ethnic differences were suppressed: the place of the Jewish community (as well as its tragic end) was not given any special attention in the town’s official history, and the living Ukrainian/orthodox minority was at best neglected. Therefore, education on the multicultural past is necessary for younger generations. Moreover, the authorities want to teach the town’s distant history in a way that would allow for a positive image of the three religious communities’ coexistence. This is justified on the grounds that the pre-War Włodawa was not a place of ethnic hostility, as was the case in many other towns in Eastern Poland.

The second dimension is economic, as in the opinion of local leaders, the town’s interesting past might attract both tourists and sponsors. Indeed, both the historic and symbolic values of the three temples are unique and there is no other place in Poland where three such buildings could be found. In the future, the town’s representatives hope to obtain enough resources to invest in a proper tourist infrastructure.

The third dimension is a positive side effect of the other two: the main beneficiary – in terms of becoming the main centre of attention - is the orthodox community which has been neglected for years. One significant gesture that the local authorities have made in relation to the orthodox minority is to subsidize their church.

The initiative described below - the Festival of Three Cultures - is one among many projects supported by the local authorities. Other examples are for instance the Summer Festivals organized each year by the Town Cultural Center (when the culture and art of various ethnic groups is presented) or the international conference of history teachers devoted to the Jewish problems which took place in Włodawa. The authorities are further working on establishing economic and cultural cooperation with towns in the Ukrainian and Belorussian border region.

The Festival of Three Cultures
Main actors and funding
The staff of the local museum [Muzeum Pojezierza Łęczyńsko-Włodawskiego] is the main organizer of the program. They design the curriculum and coordinate the Festival. The role of the local authorities is twofold. First, local authorities at a "powiat" level (Poland has a three level administrative division with self-governments at each level) are the owners of the museum, therefore employers of its staff. Second, local authorities at the town’s level actively support the Festival by attracting possible external sponsors. Last but not least, the role of local priests, both from the catholic and orthodox side, must be mentioned, as they are in charge of the temples’ buildings, which are made accessible during the Festival.

The necessary resources are mainly provided by the external sponsors (except for the salaries of museum’s staff, which are the obligation of local authorities, and relatively modest additional money from the local budgets): various NGOs (among them the Jewish Community in Warsaw), private firms, banks, and the media. Last year, funding obtained from external sponsors was approximately 86,000 PLN.

The program
The main goal of the project is the protection and promotion of a multi-cultural environment in the borderland region through education. The program points to the long and tolerant coexistence of the believers of the three religions. It recreates the image of Włodawa as a place of cultural dialogue. An idealized tolerant past is presented as a model for imitation in a democratic country. The program also stresses the specificity of Eastern Poland in contrast to homogenization and globalization of culture elsewhere. The designers of the program believe that the best way to achieve educational aims is to do it through interactive methods, hence the creation of the cultural Festival form that concentrates mainly on religions.

The Festival has already been organized four times: in 1995, 1998, 1999, and 2000. Each year the curriculum is made more complex. The Festival always takes place in autumn and lasts for three days. Each day is devoted to different religion: Friday functions as the Jewish day, Saturday as the Orthodox, and Sunday as the Catholic.

The artists who perform during the Festival are invited from the whole country, last time also from Ukraine. The audience is constituted by both tourists and believers from the local population and outside. Last year, the number of participants was around 2500.

The three temples give a symbolic framework to the initiative. The buildings of the synagogue were built in 18^th century, and renovated by the local authorities in 1990s. It is the museum’s staff who is in charge of them at the moment. The orthodox temple was built in the XIX century and is now the property of the Polish Orthodox Church. The Catholic temple, accompanied by a cloister, was built in XVIII century, and is the property of the Catholic Church. Thanks to positive relations between the two priests and the museum’s director the Festival is organized in these three temples.

The program of the most recent Festival (6-8 October 2000) included the following events:

Although the Festival normally ends on Sunday evening, this time its official ending was postponed until the 14^th of October, when the celebration of anniversary of the Jewish uprising in the annihilation camp in Sobibór was organized (as a result of the uprising a few dozen prisoners managed to free themselves, and the camp ceased to exist). As the staff of the local museum is also in charge of the place of memory and the monument in Sobibór, it took the occasion to join the Festival of Three Cultures with the celebration of uprising. In this way the tragic end of the Jewish community was commemorated. There were two key events that day: 1) a meeting of school youth from the region of Włodawa and 2) a street-race in the memory of Holocaust victims.

Concluding remarks
The policy is interesting, because it relates the developmental needs of the town to education on its past. The Polish-Ukrainian-Jewish relations had always been difficult, but were not openly hostile everywhere. In Włodawa the three nations had co-existed relatively well. Through stressing the positive elements of this co-existence and through attracting children the authors of the program want to teach tolerance. This educational aspect is important in itself, as both totalitarian regimes (firstly, the short period of fascism that resulted in the extermination of Jews, and exacerbated the antagonism between Poles and Ukrainians, and secondly, communism which fought against the Ukrainian culture at the Polish territories) caused much harm in contacts among the nations. The important dimension of the program is also the fact that it acts on behalf of the orthodox community of the town and its neighborhood.

The very fact that the town authorities have developed a strategy aimed at increasing tolerance augers well for ethnic relations in the region. Many ethnic tensions in Eastern Poland were hitherto a result of economic underdevelopment.

Main sources of information
Information gathered directly from local representatives, and a museum’s director; folders of the Festivals; town’s Web site www.um.wlodawa.pl/ ; journal edited by the museum’s staff ["Zeszyty Muzealne", Muzeum Pojezierza Łęczyńsko-Włodawskiego 2000, t. 10]; Tematy Zydowskie [The Jewish Topics], ed. Trąba, E., R. 1999. Olsztyn: Borussia.