This week falls the Multicultural Week in Grodzisk Mazowiecki. For that occasion, multiple concerts, historical reconstructions and workshops on the cultures present in Grodzisk are organized. On June 23rd and 25th will take place concerts of Klezmer music connected with lectures and workshops about Jewish culture and local history.
The first event will start at 5 P.M. (on June 23rd) by reminiscing the Jews that lived in Grodzisk Mazowiecki until Holocaust. There will be a special section dedicated to the Szapiro family. At 6 P.M. will start the concert by Symcha Keller & Przyjaciele.
The leader of the group is Symcha Krzysztof Keller (born 1963), a rabbi, activist and musician. He’s closely connected to Hasidic music and incorporates it into his songs and the masses that he leads. In the 1980s, he established a group Katharsis, but now he tours with Symcha Keller & Przyjaciele. As he says, his mission is to keep Jewish traditional music alive. Their newest album “Mayn Shtetl Kock” will be available to buy at the site along with prelate Bogdan Krawczyk’s reportage on Kock, a multicultural city in Eastern Poland.
On June 25th, from 2 P.M. there will be various events such as art workshops and Klezmer concerts. At 8 P.M. Warsaw Klezmer Band will perform. The group consists of four members, who play traditional instruments such as clarinet (Przemysław Skałuba), accordion (Rafał Grządka), contrabass (Konrad Kubicki) and drums (Adeb Chamoun). This will be their next concert in Grodzisk Mazowiecki – they have performed there also in 2021.
Both events are free and will take place at Harcerska street in Grodzisk Mazowiecki. They’re organized by the local Centre of Culture. The point of the event was to bring back the atmosphere and show the specifics of shtetls, cities populated mostly by Jews, and to commemorate the memory of those who died during the Holocaust.