May 31, 2014

The representative room 5 of the old building of the Raczynskich Library didn’t hold all the people who came at noon to the first presentation of the book-album „Fira. The Jews of Poznan. A Story about Life”. Andrzej Niziolek and Ksenia Kosakowska, the authors, talked about creating and the content of the book and website as well as about Fira, Ksenia’s Israeli grandmother, who had saved the photographs and memory of Polish Jews.

Fira Melamedzon-Salanska died in May 7, 2014 in Jerusalem. She wished to pass her albums with the photographs of Poznan Jews to the Raczynskich Library. Fira’s family, her daughter Lili Rubin, her daughter-in law Eti Salansky and her four grandsons, came from Israel to the ceremony and solemnly passed the five out of six albums to the Heritage Collections of the Raczynskich Library. Now, they will be drawn up and digitalised. In the future, they will be make available to the public for journalistic, educational and cultural purposes.

Unintentionally, the albums came back to Poland and Poznan exactly 75 years after their owner left for Palestine. Young Fira Melamedzon-Salanska crossed the border of Poland on her way to Palestine in May 31, 1939. The albums came back to Poznan in May 31, 2014.

Just after the celebration, an exhibition of enlarged reproductions of Fira’s photographs was opened in the Tea-house placed in a new wing of the Raczynskich Library. The curators of the exhibition are Sonia Rammer, a painter, psychologist and pedagogue at the University of Arts in Poznan and Andrzej Niziolek. The target of the exhibition was not to show again the pictures published in the book and on our website www.fira1915.pl but to let the Poznan people, drinking tea in the library public space, meet face to face with those who used to live in the same city and walk along the same streets.

The photographs we show come for the Raczynskich Library’s collections.

Photographic and media reports of the first presentation of the project ceremony can be found at:

http://poznan.naszemiasto.pl/galeria/zdjecia/fira-poznanscy-zydzi-premiera-ksiazki-zdjecia,2292872,galeria,t,id,tm.html (“Glos Wielkopolski” newspaper)

http://www.radiomerkury.pl/informacje/pozostale/niezwykle-zdjecia-firy.html  (Merkury Radio)

http://www.gloswielkopolski.pl/artykul/3457047,fira-poznanscy-zydzi-opowiesc-o-zyciu-premiera-ksiazki-w-bibliotece-raczynskich-zdjecia,id,t.html (“Glos Wielkopolski” newspaper)

http://poznan.gazeta.pl/poznan/1,36037,16073910,Wraz_z_tymi_zdjeciami_wracaja_do_nas_poznanscy_Zydzi.html#LokPozTxt (“Gazeta Wyborcza Poznan” newspaper)

http://www.bracz.edu.pl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1371&Itemid=100 (the Raczynskich Library)