Walk along the trail of good hearts | leading: Joanna Podolska-Płocka

In the performance “The clinic for saving a broken heart”, Ukrainian artist Victoria Myronyuk, together with the audience, will look for ways to heal a broken heart through art and community practices. During the “Walk along the trail of good hearts”, leader Joanna Podolska-Płocka will talk about good people who have helped others through difficult times.

This will be an extraordinary journey along the trail of shelters and hospices for the poorest and those in need of help. The walk begins in a unique building (now the Collegium Anatomicum of the Medical University of Łódź), which originally housed Przytułek dla Starców i Kalek built in 1896 by the Łódź Christian Charity Society. For many years the Latin phrase “Res sacra miser” (The poor are sacred) was displayed on the building.

Yes, Łódź was very poor, yes, there was ruthless capitalism, yes, children and young people were exploited in work, and old people were thrown out on the street when they were no longer useful. In addition, orphans had nowhere to go when they left the shelter and often ended up on the street, and ‘belly girls’ died of starvation or as a result of illegal abortions and lack of care. But the nature of the working class and heavily impoverished city forced the factory owners and authorities to solve the problem. On the initiative of factory owners (mainly factory owners’ wives) and various charitable and self-help organisations and circles, orphanages, nursing homes, shelter for children, the poor and crippled, war invalids and even widows and maidens were established in Łódź.

Most of them were established before the world had even heard of Korczak, but their creators and founders were guided by a similar idea: they wanted to make life easier for people already cruelly hurt by fate, the poor, the rejected, the crippled, the sick.

Who will be angry with these people for not being like the ideal we dream of. Yes, they are simple, they offend us at every turn: with their speech and actions, their lack of education and civility. But let us look at them through the prism of love, and then they will cease to offend us – wrote Janusz Korczak at the beginning of the 20th century.

In Łódź, too, there was no shortage of “Korczaków” and “siłaczek” who fixed broken and sick hearts. Let’s take a look at their stories and the places that have survived.

Duration of the walk: 1.5-2 hours

Bio

Joanna Podolska-Płocka – journalist and publicist, writes about multicultural Łódź. She graduated from the University of Łódź with degrees in Polish Philology and Theatre Studies. A former journalist for “Gazeta Wyborcza”, she is now an employee of the University of Łódź. Since 2011, she has been the director of the Marek Edelman Dialogue Centre.