Beiteinu Chaj – 2004 Foundation

The Beiteinu Chaj – 2004 Foundation was founded in the year 2004. In October of the same year it was registered in Poland under the NIP Number 8821962804 and the Regional Number 020024901.

The Beiteinu Chaj – 2004 Foundation has begun with the task of saving the synagogue of Dzier?oniów / Reichenbach from total decay and of restoring it, faithful to its original style and its history. Upon completion of this project, the restored building will serve as a Jewish house of worship again, but also as a museum and a centre of education.

The Beiteinu Chaj – 2004 Foundation was founded by Rafael Blau and Beata Sauermann in 2004 in Poland.

Rafael Blau – President of the Foundation

Rafael Blau is the current president of the Foundation. He has a per­sonal connection to Dzier?oniów, where he lived as a child until 1965, when he moved with his parents to Israel. Rafael Blau is the son of survivors of the Holocaust. For part of the year, he lives in Beer Sheba in Israel, and part of the year, he makes his home in Dzier?oniów in Poland.

Beata Sauermann is vicepresident and has been living in Great Britain for some time. She was born in Po­land and worked there in Jewish research for many years. She is the granddaughter of Holocaust survi­vors.

Other members of the Beiteinu Chaj – 2004 Foundati­on are Jewish and non-Jewish persons living in Dzier?oniów / Reichenbach and its surrounding area, in Warsaw and in Canada.

It is the objective of the Foundati­on to make it possible for people from all over the world, Jews and non-Jews, especially young peop­le, to get to know the story of the Jews in Poland, not only in relation to the horrors of the Holocaust, but also to the ancient rich heritage of Judaism, related to its contribu­tions to the history, culture, and the development of the Polish nation and the German nation,  as well as the different regions in Germany that today are part of the Republic of Poland. The program of the museum and cultural center of the Beiteinu Chaj – 2004 Foundation will also include the long and distinguished contribution of the Polish and German Jews to Judaism and the Je­wish culture, religious and secular, the Polish and German as well.

At this time, there is only one in­stitution near Kraków, that offers an educational program about Je­wish life in Poland before the Ho­locaust and also does research in this field. Its name is  Its name is the Auschwitz  Jewish Center (www.ajcf.org); it  deals primarily with the Jewish history of Eastern Poland uncluding t he parts that were part of Poland before 1939 and are now part of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania.

The program of the Beiteinu Chaj – 2004 Foundation will concern itself with the history of Juda­ism and the last  two hundred years of Jewish life in Lower Silesia, especially in the area of Dier?oniów / Reichenbach. Inclu­ded in this task are the study and the archiving of documents and pictorial records – originals and copies – which refer to the syn­agogue, Jewish cemeteries, and other institutions and offer evi­dence of past Jewish life in the Jewish communities of German Lower Silesia and, since 1945, in Polish Dolny ?l?sk.

Wars, political events, and the holocaust left behind a unique Jewish history of two distinctly different Jewish coimmunities in Dzier?oniów / Reichenbach: Firstly the German- Jewish community, re-established in the early 1820s that thrived for more than a century until the advent of the Hitler regime and its oppressions of all Jews , and the Kristallnacht after which those Jews who were fortunate enough, emigrated to foreign country while those unable to do so were murdered in concentration camps. After 1939, there was no longer a Jewish community in Reichenbach. Secondly, the arrival of a large number of Polish 0Jews liberated from the concentration camps who created a new, Polish Jewish community in Dzier?oniów / Reichenbach that was soon thriving, but nearly “died” after the oppression of the Polish Communist regime, when nearly all Jews left the city and the country after 1960. And thirdly, beginning with t he year 2004. the rebirth of a jewish presence, resulting from the creation and the activities centering around the rescue of the historic synagogue by Fundacja Beiteinu Chaj – 2004 / Beiteinu Chaj – 2004 Foundation.

It is said, that one can only create a better future, if one attempts to learn about and understand the past. With this idea in mind, the Beiteinu Chaj – 2004 Foundation began its work.