On November 4, 2024 a club meeting of the members of the Center of Multicultural Education (CEM) took place. November, as the month marking the anniversary of Poland’s regained independence after 123 years of partition, was an appropriate time to organize a meeting focused on this important occasion.
At the beginning of the meeting, CEM President Bożena Kocyk thanked the participants of the project “Knowledge of Foreign Languages Widens Horizons” for their dedication and fruitful collaboration. The final project report was approved in full, which enabled the National Agency to transfer the final payment, amounting to 20% of the project’s total value, to the association’s account.
Later in the meeting, we listened to an introductory speech and watched a film prepared by our colleague Jarosław Szewczyk about Bronisław Piłsudski, the brother of Józef Piłsudski. Bronisław was an exile and an ethnographer who studied the peoples and cultures of the Far East, particularly the Ainu people. He was sentenced to death for his involvement in an assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander III, but his sentence was later commuted to exile and forced labor on Sakhalin Island. He married a relative of an Ainu chief relative, with whom he had two children.
Japanese Esperantist Teruo Matsumoto, who lived in Poland, was also interested in the life of Bronisław Piłsudski. He appeared in the film, and as Vice President of the Polish Esperanto Association, Matsumoto often spoke about Bronisław at Esperanto meetings.
The meeting concluded with a group singing of patriotic songs accompanied by our colleague Alicja Skalska on the accordion.
Bożena Kocyk
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