Hanna Halenka | Local on-site Group, Novogrudok/Belarus
I am a young student, activist, enthusiast and researcher!
My journey began as a teenager in 2017 in my hometown of Brest, when I first decided to write my first research on the subject of your last name!
Having conducted an extensive search and collected material from the personal sources of my family, having collected all archives and histories, an essay was published under my hand, which subsequently took the 1st place in the Republic of Belarus...
If we go back to 2017, we can find my article in the magazine «Переходный возраст» in belarussian language. The publication in this edition meant a lot to me.
But a few years later, I moved to study abroad in Poland , where I became interested in volunteering, helped with the project Beat Blood Cancer where we actively helped with the processing registrations and also to take analysis.
With my team we conducted the project "Moth ", which was engaged in creative activity with people with disabilities...
LINK to the short film, photos, article of project.
From 2019-2020 I participated in the nationwide project "School of Dialogue". Together with this project, we organized a solemn celebration of the 78th anniversary of the deportation of the Jewish people from Dabrowa Białostocka. And take part in the project “Odczytywanie popiłów” that devoted to restoring the memory of the Jewish community of the region. One of the most important events was celebrating XXIII Day of Judaism in the Catholic Curch in Poland on the slogan "Remember Sabbath Day to celebrate it properly": LINK
Along with this project, we cleaned up the Jewish cemetery in Dąbrowa Białostocka and participated in various promotional activities. I was interested in learning the history of the Jewish population in Dąbrowa Białostocka, and as much as possible, help Jewish culture. Because oddly enough, but there’s a lot of misunderstandings that people take incorrect for truth, so I wanted to pay more attention to the true history in my work.
Project “Odzcytywanie popiołów” : LINK
Celebrating XXIII Day of Judaism in the Catholic Church in Poland : LINK
Celebrating XXIII Day of Judaism in Dąbrowa Białostocka : LINK
In 2020, I decided to write my second research. This time I got into a topic where I had something to tell people about the Holocaust in the history of my family and my city!
I became part of project" Holocaust in the History of my family", that was organized by germany organization Kultur- und Bildungsprojekte e.V .Together with my colleague, I created three exhibitions (animated comic book stories) based on our stories. Then we make the exhibition in Minsk on the theme of the our project , when our works were representation the history of genocide in our own families.
But as a big fan of history, my next job was to rethink the biography of our lyceum patron- gen. Nikodem Sulik. When I was writing an essay, my goal was to create a mini-graphic representation of his biography. I was able to take first place in “The 19th Poviat Historical Competition” on subject “Nikodem Sulik – our patron , or yours too?” and prove that local history can also be interesting and fascinating for young people! LINK
See Hanna's land-art installation created in the Naliboki forest during our first on-site meeting in Belarus (8-14 August 2021): VIDEO