Author's meeting with Dr. Mirosław Reczka - Latvia in the mirror of the Book of Memory of Dyneburg

One city. Many nations, languages and memories. A story that allows you to look at Latvia from a completely different perspective.

On 27 October 2026 at 18:00 we invite you to the Podlasie Library for a meeting “Latvia in the mirror of the Book of Memory of Dyneburg”. The guest of the event will be Dr. Mirosław Reczko, and the conversation will be led by Aleksander Sosna.

Daugavpils — Daugavpils — is the second largest city of Latvia and a unique place on the map of Europe. For centuries connected with the history of the Republic of Two Nations and the Polish Enflant, it remains an important center of the Polish minority in Latvia. At the same time, it is the largest Russian-speaking city of the European Union. It is here that you can see especially clearly how complex and multilayered the history of this part of Europe is.

The history of Dyneburg is also the history of the world, which in the 20th century was brutally destroyed. During the meeting we will look at the fate of the inhabitants of the city through the prism of the “Book of Memory of Dineburg”. Based on its Polish translation, we will present the scale of the tragedy that affected the local Jewish community, as well as the dramatic experiences of the Latvian population. The history of the extermination of the Jews of Dineburg will become the starting point for a conversation about the fate of Jewish communities in the Baltic States and about memory, which today allows us to better understand the past of the region.
Dr. Mirosław Reczko is a historian, Englishman, translator and editor of Jewish memory books, as well as a local government and manager. He obtained his PhD degree in 2019 at the University of Bialystok on the basis of a dissertation devoted to Polish-Jewish relations in the Ciechanowiec area during the Second World War. For three terms, he served as Mayor of Ciechanowiec, was also Chancellor of the Bialystok University of Technology, and in 2026 he assumed the position of President of the Management Board of the Łomżyński Weg Scientific Society.

For many years he has been involved in restoring the memory of the Jewish inhabitants of Bialystok and protecting the material heritage of this community. He led, among others, the restoration of the Jewish cemetery in Ciechanowiec and the reconstruction and restoration of two synagogues in Ciechanowiec, collected and disseminated documents concerning the local Jewish community, and participated in the translation of the memory books of Ciechanowec, Jedwabny and Zambrow. In its entirety he translated the “Book of Memory of the Jewish Community in Stawiski”. In 2020 he was a finalist of the POLIN Award.

It will be a meeting about the history of the border, multiculturalism and memory — about the place where the destinies of Poles, Latvians, Jews and Russians have intertwined for centuries, and the traces of this complex past are still visible today.
During the event, it will also be possible to purchase a four-language translation of the “Book of Memory of Dineburg” at a promotional price.

We invite you on 27 October 2026 at 18:00 to the Łukasz Górnicki Library in Białystok. Admission is free.