Leon Bibel - our man in Washington D.C.

While in Washington D.C. last week, I went to visit someone from Szczebrzeszyn, who takes a prominent place in the capital of the United States.

Right next to the Cherry Tree Walk, in one of the most prestigious spots of Washington adjacent to the National Mall, the F.D.R. Memorial is located. This is a special monument for the special president, who lead the United States through the years of Great Depression and World War II.

The monument is not the best description of the place - it is rather a park with statues symbolizing 12 years of Roosevelt's presidency and the biggest object of its type in the U.S., covering over 7.5 acres of land in the heart of Washington.

One of the most popular statutes among the tourists is "Bread Line" By George Segal. The sorrowful faces of the life-size statues are a powerful expression of the times, showing the inactivity and troubles of everyday citizens during the Great Depression. Many visitors to the memorial pretend to stand in line to have their photos taken.

The first man in line is the gentleman I came to visit: Leon Bibel, brother of my friend Philip Bibel, who wrote the memoir from Szczebrzeszyn "Tales of the Shtetl". In 1926 together with his mother, brother and sister Leon emigrated from Poland to San Francisco. He became an artist: sculptor and painter, apprentice of famous Diego Rivera. His works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston as well as museums of Rutgers and Princeton Universities.

He was a friend and neighbor of the American sculptor George Segal, and was both an anonymous and named character of Segal's arrays and portraits.

It was a great experience for me to stand in the park, not far from the Lincoln Memorial, where in 1963 Martin Luther King had his famous speech "I have a dream", knowing that here I am, standing next to the Szczebrzeszynian positioned in the very center of the world.

Tomasz Pańczyk, September 19, 2005