Finalists of 2023 POLIN Award: Dorota Bida, Chełm

The guide and educator shares her passion and knowledge by creating exhibitions at the Wiktor Ambroziewicz Museum of the Chełm Region in Chełm, focusing on the culture and history of the town’s Jewish community. She engages in promotional activities to popularize knowledge about the town’s history in the context of its multicultural past, organizes museum lessons and historical walks in the footsteps of the Jewish heritage in Chełm. She also supports and consults educational projects related to Jewish culture and the Jewish residents of the town.

In 2021, she joined the network of Leaders of Dialogue. She implements projects acquired through grant competitions related to education, local cultural heritage, and the preservation of the memory of the Jewish community of Chełm. For years, she has been establishing contacts and corresponding with descendants of Chełm Jews, primarily Chelmers from Israel, the United States, as well as South Africa, Brazil, and Germany. She provides assistance with archival queries aimed at reconstructing family histories. She archives artefacts and copies of pre-war photographs in the form of scans from family albums as well as individual photos that miraculously survived, just like their owners. During visits by Chelmers to their ancestral hometown, she looks after them, organizes joint meetings with Chełm residents, and initiates commemorative activities related to the victims of the Holocaust from the Chełm Jewish community.

In 2019, as a result of archival research, traces of the lost members of the Gutenberg family were discovered, and they were commemorated by name by embedding Stolpersteine, namely The Stones of Memory. The Stolpersteine are located at 13 Pocztowa Street. The undertaken actions are planned and implemented in collaboration with descendants associated with the Chelmer Organization of Israel. The most significant project jointly realized was the organization of a 4-day commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the annihilation of the Chełm Jewish community.