Using a Peaceful Time to Reclaim a Painful Past
Ian Fisher, The New York Times, October 5, 2002

POGRANICZE (BORDERLAND) FOUNDATION in the USA.
Krzysztof Czyżewski, a founder and president of the Pogranicze (Borderland) Foundation - a well-known organization in Central and Eastern Europe is now looking for American partners to add a new dimension to the activities of the Foundation. In the ten years of its work, the Borderland Foundation has dealt with things that in our part of Europe are particular, concrete, and at the same time nurturing. The very name, Borderlands, indicates a realm, hazy of for outsiders, where one must actually be in order to understand people who have different languages and different traditions, Cz. Miłosz
Located in Eastern part of Poland, in a small town of Sejny the Borderland Foundation was established at the time of dissolution of the communist system, after the Berlin Wall came down and since then been taking part in the democratic transformation of the region.
It was founded to build a platform of cooperation and mutual enrichment among multicultural communities. The foundation’s employees are highly qualified specialists in intercultural work carrying out innovatory artistic, educational and research projects. Through art exhibitions, concerts, plays, seminars and publishing house, the foundation is developing its main goals to provide understanding, tolerance and rebuild multicultural society which has lived in that region.
Its mission is to be accomplished by working inside the societies proud of their pluralistic traditions and yet where, as a result of ethnic and religious diversification, potential threats of igniting new conflicts still exist. . “Borderland” through social and educational programs, helps the people of economically neglected, multiethnic communities of the Polish, Lithuanians, Jews, Russians, Belarussians, Ukrainians and Roms to get to know, understand and respect their own history as well as the history, culture and tradition of their neighbors.
Of special importance to the Foundation is the reconstitution of Jewish culture and the rediscovery of its heritage.
Czyżewski’s deep belief is that by understanding our neighbors, past and present, we learn how to coexist peacefully, reaching better quality of life.
The activities of the Borderland Foundation have raised a great deal of interest in the United States.
Recently presented in local and national media have attracted the attention of American public as well as potential partners willing to establish a cooperation with the Borderland Foundation.

Heterogeneous lands which made up the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and which were partitioned by the Russians, Prussians and Austrians at the end of the eighteenth century were inhabited not only by Poles, Lithuanians and Jews, but by Germans, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Armenians as well as some smaller national and religious groups. History and present life of those multicultural and multi-religious communities, became a subject of a symposium which took place at the Embassy of Poland on November 12.
The discussed problems were taboo in the Communist period but the new conditions caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union make a cooperative effort by Polish, Jewish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian and German historians possible, in order to look again at the challenges of the multi-ethnic heritage in north-eastern Europe. The participants of the discussion were: Anne Applebaum, Zbigniew Brzeziński, Krzysztof Czyżewski, Jacek M. Nowakowski and Antony Polonski who led the discussion.