Exhibition traces history of Mormon village in northeastern Poland

This article really caught my eye since the original name of this blog was Mormon Village.

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A new exhibition in northeastern Poland explores the history of a unique local village that was once home to Mormons.

(from polskieradio.pl 10-17-24)

The exhibition in Zełwągi, a village near the popular tourist resort of Mikołajki in Poland's northeastern Mazuria region, aims to keep the memory of its former Mormon community alive.

"We’re the generation that’s ready to explore this history," said Joanna Pruszyńska, one of the organizers and a member of the Zełwągi Rural Women's Association.

"Earlier generations were too scarred by the past, but now people are genuinely interested in who lived here before us," she added. "Local history is much more popular now than it was 20-30 years ago."

The story of Zełwągi’s Mormon community dates back to 1920 when a 23-year-old resident, Friedrich Fischer, traveled to Berlin, where he encountered members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also known as the Mormons.

Upon his return to Mazuria in 1923, Fischer and six other villagers were baptized in Lake Inulec, marking the beginning of the Mormon presence in the village.

By 1926, the number of Mormons in the area had grown to 40, attracting missionaries from the United States and Germany.

At the time, Mazuria was part of East Prussia, making Zełwągi the only Mormon community in Germany.

The exhibition highlights the simple, close-knit lifestyle of the Mormons.

According to a letter from a former resident displayed in the exhibition, the Mormons were known for their modesty and community spirit: "They didn’t proselytize or try to convert their neighbors. Their religiosity was private, seen only in their chapel, but their kindness and integrity were apparent in their daily interactions."

The Mormon community in Zełwągi dwindled by the late 1970s when most of the congregation left for Germany.

Their chapel, which had various uses over the years, including as a wedding hall and storage space, became a Roman Catholic church in 1982. To this day, services are held in the chapel, where a painting of Christ, left by the Mormons, still hangs.

Marcin Kulinicz, a representative of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, attended the exhibition's opening.

"This place is important to us as a symbol of our long-standing presence in Poland," he said. "Our church members often visit Zełwągi, enjoying both beautiful nature and the connection to the local community." 

In addition to the history of the Mormon village, the exhibition features a prewar map of Zełwągi with a list of residents and the story of a roadside cross erected in secret during the communist era, in 1961.

Dozens of photographs from the village’s past are also on display.

The exhibition is part of a broader project called "Weaving Stories," organized by the Zełwągi Rural Women’s Association and the Hydro-polis Foundation, with support from the National Centre for Culture's "Etnopolska" initiative.

It will be open to the public on the next four Sundays, from October 20 to November 10, between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the village's former school.

https://www.polskieradio.pl/395/7789/Artykul/3436601,exhibition%C2%A0traces%C2%A0history-of-mormon-village-in-northeastern-poland

Historic Site is Dedicated in Iowa

Changes In The Interior Of The Salt Lake Temple

(sic et non blog)

Many people care deeply about the Salt Lake Temple.  My wife and I are among them.  Although neither of us grew up in Utah, that is the temple in which we chose to be married.  As I write, looking up, I see a very large framed photograph of the Salt Lake Temple hanging on the wall opposite me, showing it on a winter night with snow.  The temple in Salt Lake has long been an iconic image of the overall Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and it has richly merited that status: When my wife and I lived in Egypt shortly after our marriage, we had a beautiful photograph on our living room wall of the Salt Lake Temple.  It was a view from the south southwest, showing the temple all aglow in the rays of the setting sun.  One day, a little boy whom we knew and who had been born and raised there in Cairo came to visit us.  Wordlessly, he stood and looked up at that photograph.  We hadn’t told him what it was.  Allahu akbar, he said.  “God is most great!”

We mourn some of the aspects of the Salt Lake Temple that are now irretrievably lost.  But we felt the same way about the Logan Utah Temple when it was renovated quite a number of years ago.  Once, during that renovation, my wife and I stood by it and realized, to our shock, that it was literally hollow.  There was, so far as we could see, nothing whatever within its walls.  Looking through the window nearest us, we could see up through a window at a higher level on the opposite side of the building and toward its further end.  And, when the temple was re-opened, we were disappointed to see that its interior looked much the way other temples of the 1970s and 1980s looked; very little was left of its 1880s flavor.

Later, though, I happened to be speaking with a member of the Logan temple presidency.  In the course of our conversation, I lamented the gutting of the building.  But he told me something then that really helped me:  When they began their renovations, he said, they discovered that the floors of the temple were literally dangerous.  It was something of a miracle that they had not collapsed.  They had to be replaced.  It had to be hollowed out and re-reengineered.

The unavoidable fact is that the Salt Lake Temple is going to be very different inside (and outside, and in important ways that won’t be visible) from what it was.  In some respects, people who knew it before and who remember it may find it unrecognizable.  And that is indisputably a loss.  Many will no doubt regret that more could not be preserved or, at least, restored to what they recall, and that so much history will have vanished.  A renovation on this scale does damage.  There’s no question about that.

But a few key points should be kept in mind by faithful Latter-day Saints.

-First of all, temples are not museums.  They are very often beautiful, and many of them are historic.  But historic preservation is far from their primary purpose.

-This renovation will make the Salt Lake Temple significantly more accessible to people with physical and other limitations.   It will, for example, not require standing up and moving from room to room.  It will feature an improved design for elevators.  It will offer state-of-the-art accommodations for the hearing- and visually-impaired.  It will be equipped to offer ordinances in scores of languages.  Imagine what this will mean for non-English-speaking Saints who visit the headquarters of their church!

-The renovated temple will allow more work to be done — with, for instance, two baptistries (not just one), and significantly more rooms for ordinances.  And this, of course, is the real purpose of the building.

-While it will be new, the interior of the temple has been designed to honor the original Victorian style.  Not all of the previous renovations — and there have been previous renovations; this is not the first — have maintained the temple’s stylistic consistency.  This renovation has an eye to the future, yes, seeking to ensure that (as Brigham Young hoped) the Salt Lake Temple will last a thousand years.  But it also seeks very much to honor the past.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2024/09/changes-in-the-interior-of-the-salt-lake-temple.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawFdtKxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHXdgj14w7lGhpoeZOVZKYJzCR0Z_3JP8QXVl9tzgK8dyDizNfajy5fIkYw_aem_XRAbH_kXgsS4cTXiGllqWQ