The former Nazi concentration camp KL Plaszow in the Podgórze District is — aside from the former ghetto — the largest site of Jewish genocide in Krakow. For many years it has served as a place of leisure and thus of remembering and simultaneously forgetting. It is a spot which generates healing power, especially visible in the plants that grow in this location.
After the war it was left largely unattended and reclaimed by nature. Today, bushes, trees and meadows create ecological havens for numerous species of flora and fauna. During this walk with ethnobotanist Karol Szurdak, we will discover the site’s medicinal plants, learn how to recognize them and understand their healing qualities. Jason Francisco will be joining the walk, sharing the historical overview and resonance of the site. After the walk, we invite you to participate in a workshop during which we will make mixtures and infusions of the herbs collected earlier at KL Plaszow. By doing so, we will try to find answers to the question of whether the earth, fertilized by genocide, bears medicinal powers, and what are the limits of utilizing it.
This event is part of FestivALT 2023 organized as part of the project "MultiMemo. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering for Social Justice" with the support of the European Union through the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) Program (2021–2027).
