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Białystok Tower of Babel

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/educational workshops

As we know from the Old Testament, the construction of the Tower of Babel ended up in failure. People were punished for their pride by the confusion of languages that continues to this day. Ludwik Zamenhof dreamed of bringing one common language back to mankind. That’s how Esperanto was created.

Nearly 100 years ago one man had a dream: he wanted a huge tower in the centre of Bialystok, inspired by the biblical tower of Babel, in honour of Ludwik Zamenhof. The monument was never built. But we can use our imagination and smooth hands. We invite you for the Winter Break with LEGO Bricks, where we will show you a model of a monument that was never created, built with approximately 10 thousand blocks, invite you to see the city from the bird's eye view, and encourage to participate in the great construction, from which the city we all would like to show to Ludwik Zamenhof will be created. 

Zamenhof’s idea of an universal language facilitating communication between people all over the world survived. Esperanto is still popular all over the world, likewise in Poland and in Białystok. That's why we made a symbolic representation of the idea – the Tower of Babel built with 10 thousand LEGO bricks, accordingly to the project of Abraham Ostrzega.

In the first part of the workshops participants will get to know who Ludwik Zamenhof was and why he created Esperanto. Then they will see two replicas of the monument “Tower of Babel” designed by Abraham Ostrzega. The first one was made of gypsum by artist Małgorzata Niedzielko, the second one is made with LEGO bricks. They will also learn what a monument is and what features it has. Then they will have to build their own version of the LEGO monument dedicated to Zamenhof.