{"id":2493,"date":"2026-09-25T12:54:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T10:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dembitzer.pl\/?page_id=2493"},"modified":"2026-10-17T10:51:36","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T08:51:36","slug":"opinions-and-recommendations","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/dembitzer.pl\/?page_id=2493","title":{"rendered":"Feedback"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Below you will find some feedback about my services and my activism from my friends and clients.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a pleasure to write this letter of reference for Mr. Ireneusz Socha and his expert services as a tour guide and researcher of sites and issues of Jewish interest and history in D\u0119bica (Yiddish name: Dembitz), Poland, as well as other locations in Poland. I have known Mr. Socha since 2010 and we have remained in close contact over the years. My family comes from Dembitz and I met Mr. Socha for the first time when he showed me the Jewish sites around the town. I was immediately impressed with the breadth and depth of his knowledge and his passion for Jewish history and culture. In addition, he is very personable and it is both pleasant and interesting to spend time with him, and his English is excellent.
I was moved to learn that his interest in Jewish history dates back to living in proximity to the local Jewish cemetery. He played an important role in its preservation. On his own initiative, he undertook a translation into Polish of the Sefer Dembitz (Book of Dembitz), the most important record of Jewish life in the town before World War II as well as during the Holocaust.
I have attended the commemoration ceremony which he started in 2016, in Dembitz, as an event marking the tragic date of the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in 1942. This ceremony continues to be an important annual event sponsored by the D\u0119bica Municipality; it attracts local as well as international attendees. I am also in frequent touch with Mr. Socha about the 18th-century New Town Synagogue near the market square in Dembitz and the plans to preserve it which are currently underway.
I have spent time with Mr. Socha both in Dembitz and in Warsaw and every time I learn much from him. Also an accomplished musician, he is passionate about Jewish culture and the need to preserve the Jewish cultural heritage in Poland.
I highly recommend Ireneusz Socha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014<\/strong>Aviva Weintraub (New York)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We extend our heartfelt thanks to our esteemed friend, Ireneusz Socha, for his dedicated efforts to document and preserve the memory of D\u0119bica’s Jewish community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014<\/strong>Professor Daniel Offen (Israel)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am so grateful to have the opportunity to recommend Ireneusz Socha, who guided me during an incredibly meaningful and emotional visit to Poland. Our trip was deeply personal. Ireneusz took us to the places where my family lived during the war and helped us connect with a part of our family history that we had previously only known through stories and fragments. From the beginning, it was clear that he understood the significance of what this journey meant to us.
Ireneusz went far beyond what we could ever have expected from a guide. His knowledge was extraordinary, but what made the experience so special was the empathy, sensitivity, and care with which he shared it. He knew when to provide historical context, when to help us understand what we were seeing, and when simply to give us the space to take everything in. Throughout our time together, we felt completely taken care of. Ireneusz approached our family\u2019s history with genuine respect and humanity, and his kindness allowed us to experience places connected to an incredibly painful period without ever feeling rushed or overwhelmed. He made what could have been an extremely difficult journey feel safe, thoughtful, and meaningful.
I cannot recommend Ireneusz highly enough. Anyone fortunate enough to have him as their guide will be in extraordinarily knowledgeable, compassionate, and caring hands. We will always be grateful to him for what he gave our family.
With heartfelt gratitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Zach Blumner (New York)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am more grateful than I can say to Ireneusz Socha for research he’s shared with me and his generosity in helping me with my own research. I first contacted him for help tracking down information about where my grandmother’s parents died. I knew they were from Debica but neither I nor anyone else in my family had reliable information about what had happened to them. I had inherited a copy of a Polish letter written almost a hundred years ago to family who’d come to America, which seemed like a possible lead, but no one was able to translate it. In addition to providing me with extremely detailed information about Debica and the main Jewish families who lived there in the decades before World War ll, Ireneusz immediately translated the letter, which turned out to be two separate letters. I learned only later that his gifts as a translator go way beyond what he did for me. He’s translated into Polish the Book of Dembitz, the key record of Jewish life in Debica before and during the Holocaust.
Ireneusz knows more about Debica than I had imagined was possible. He is both the custodian of a world that once existed and at the same time committed to communicating the history and traces of that world for the world to come. He not only knows minute details about what was once Debica’s thriving New Synagogue, he’s worked tirelessly for its rehabilitation and re-opening as a cultural center in 2028. Similarly, he not only knows the histories of those buried in the Debica’s Jewish Cemetery, he’s overseen (and insisted upon) its restoration. Apparently as a boy he watched the burial grounds being treated as a picnic area and committed himself to getting the town’s administration to getting them cleaned and restored. Not content to be only a scholar, he finds ways to translate his scholarship into action. He seems like the embodiment of Tikun Olam, his knowledge matched only by his generosity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 Laura Levine, Professor of Theatre Studies, Department of Drama, Tisch School of the Arts (New York University<\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am a descendant of a Jewish family from Debica in Poland. I want to express my gratitude and also to warmly recommend Ireneusz Socha as a tour guide and a host in that town.
My wife and I arrived for our first visit to the city my family resided in until the Holocaust. Ireneusz guided us with a lot of information and personal knowledge of the city and the Jewish life there before the Holocaust. His burden to keep the memory of the Jewish community and his knowledge of the life of the Jews there was beyond my expectations and hopes.
We have done most of our tour on foot, stopping to hear different stories and explanations of the houses of different families, their businesses, and the cemetery.
No less impressive was hearing about Doctor Miko\u0142ajk\u00f3w who saved Jews in the Holocaust and became one of the Righteous Among the Nations by the state of Israel.
Therefore, I strongly recommend contacting Ireneusz for a tour of the Jewish life in Debica.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Tsafrir Yarden (Israel \/ USA)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a Doctor of Humanities with a habilitation in history and a Professor of Research and Teaching at Adam Mickiewicz University in Pozna\u0144, whose scholarly interests include the history of Galician Jews in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I am pleased to offer this letter of recommendation in support of Mr. Ireneusz Socha’s research. Mr. Socha is an eminent regional historian with whom I have the pleasure of collaborating. He possesses a high level of historical literacy and exceptional knowledge of the history and culture of the Jews of D\u0119bica and the surrounding subregion. It suffices to note that Mr. Socha oversaw the publication of a monumental work of great significance for the history of the town: Sefer Dembic: Memorial Book of the Jewish Community of D\u0119bica (ed. D. Leibel; Polish ed. I. Socha; 2nd Polish ed., D\u0119bica, 2021). The volume contains a wealth of essential information for anyone studying the history of D\u0119bica, whether from a scholarly or a popular-scholarly perspective.
Based on my familiarity with Mr. Socha’s body of work, I can only express the highest regard for his methodological skill as a researcher of the past and for his scholarly integrity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014<\/strong>Professor Klaudiusz \u015awiecicki (Adam Mickiewicz University in Pozna\u0144, Poland)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Below you will find some feedback about my services and my activism from my friends and clients. *** It is a pleasure to write this letter of reference for Mr. Ireneusz Socha and his expert services as a tour guide and researcher of sites and issues of Jewish interest and history in D\u0119bica (Yiddish name: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2493","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dembitzer.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dembitzer.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dembitzer.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dembitzer.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dembitzer.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2493"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/dembitzer.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2561,"href":"https:\/\/dembitzer.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2493\/revisions\/2561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dembitzer.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}