KrakowInformer.com

Tolerance Festival

While Krakow is perhaps the most gay-friendly city in Poland – and at one point Cracow planned to organize a promotional campaign aimed exclusively at the gay community – it seems that tolerance is still an issue to be discussed in the country. In 2003 several members of the Krakow branch of the Kampania Przeciw Homofobii (Anti-Homophoby Campaign) decided to change the unfortunate course of events, by organizing the first Tolerance Festival in Krakow.

The first Tolerance Festival was eventually organized in 2004 and was a 4 day event. The Tolerance Festival was composed of several movie screenings, concerts, exhibitions and a symposium. An important event was also a visit in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Oswiecim, commemorating the homosexual victims of the Holocaust.

One of the key parts of the first Tolerance Festival was to be a grand parade organized on the Main Square. This, along with the Jagiellonian University taking patronage over the Festival, was too much for the conservative circles that started protesting loud enough to bring European attention to the festival. Finally, as opposed to the 100 people planned by the organizers, about a thousand people took part in the 2004 parade. Additionally, a petition in support for the Tolerance Festival was signed by many of Krakow's intellectuals, including the Nobel Prize winners Czeslaw Milosz and Wislawa Szymborska.

Having gained such grand attention, the Tolerance Festival was continued in the following years with little changes in its form. However, the event became a burden too big to bare for just a regional wing of the Kampania Przeciw Homofobii, and a foundation, named “Kultura dla Tolerancji” (“Culture for Tolerance”) was established. Now, the Tolerance Festival is just one of the events organized or taken care of by the foundation.

The 2009 Kultura dla Tolerancji festival will take place between April 16th and 19th. For details, see the festival's home page: www.tolerancja.org.pl.