In 2021, Aleksander Prugar and Helena Czernek found traces of a mezuza — an outline in old paint of the traditional small case containing verses from the Torah — on the gray door frame of Halina Parzonko’s apartment.
Over time, as they gained Ms. Parzonko’s trust, she told them stories about the prewar tenement where she was born in 1942 and still lives today. In one of those tales, her mother watched as German soldiers during World War II used knives to pry mezuzas off door frames in the building, telling her to mind her own business or she would end up like her neighbors who had been taken away.
Now the traces of the mezuza from her door frame, along with more than 200 others, have been recreated by Mi Polin, a business founded by Mr. Prugar and Ms. Czernek in 2014 to save such reminders of the six million Jews killed and the millions more displaced during the war. (The Hebrew name means, in English, From Poland.)
“We wanted to make something important, something tangible,” Ms. Czernek said. “There was such a strong voice that gave me this feeling that mezuza traces represent the whole emptiness that left after the Jewish population, and that there are these voices saying, ‘Don’t forget us.’”
In recent years, Mr. Prugar, who also is a professional photographer, and Ms. Czernek, a product designer, have traveled to more than 160 locations in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and other parts of Eastern Europe to try to recapture some of that loss. Maps indicating where they have found traces of mezuzas, photographs and histories of the Jewish communities in those areas and even a few original door frames now are displayed at the Mi Polin shop, which opened in July 2024 on Zlota Street, near one of the few remaining walls of the Warsaw Ghetto. The space also doubles as a studio for the business.
“They are creative, talented and committed,” said Michael Schudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, who was born in New York City. “There were 3.5 million Jews here before the war. 90 percent of them were murdered, many survivors left Poland and actually to find physical traces to remind us of the presence of what Jews meant here in Poland is incredibly important to history. It is important to the soul of the nation.”
Creating Judaica, art and objects linked to the Jewish faith and culture was something that Ms. Czernek started to investigate when she took a ceramics course as part of her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. As her family is Jewish, “my mother suggested to me to make a hanukkiah for our family,” she said, referring to the nine-branched menorah used during Hanukkah. “Not everything has to come from Israel, the U.S. or China.”
Discovering and Experimenting
During a 2013 trip to the typhoon-ravaged Philippines, Mr. Prugar and Ms. Czernek — who were a couple at the time and dated for five years but are now just business partners — helped local villagers create crafts from downed coconut trees. Later that year, during a trip to Krakow, Poland, Ms. Czernek was shown traces of mezuzas in doorways across the city and began to connect craftsmanship and history.
“Helena was mostly focused on the artistic value of this project,” said Mr. Prugar, who has a degree in journalism from University of Warsaw. “I recognized that mezuzas could be objects that people would like to have. So it was the perfect example of design because it tells a story, it looks nice and it has meaning and personal connection.”
First, they had to figure out how to take impressions of the traces — some were just outlines in the paint, others were indentations in the door frames. (Families that had little money would carve a cavity into the frame, put the Torah prayer inside and then nail a piece of wood or metal over the opening.)
They tried Plasticine, a puttylike modeling material, but it could not be removed easily and did not stand up well during the casting process.
A friend of Ms. Czernek from art school then directed them to the owner of a foundry near Warsaw that did bronze casting work for high-end contemporary art sculptors. He recommended using a natural sticky silicone, which they mix on site, position over the trace and then lift off once the silicone dries. The trace of the mezuza and the surface of the door frame are not damaged in the process.
Back at the studio, the imprint is turned into a plaster mold that then is sent off to the foundry. There, an aluminum cast of the mold is made, and molten metal is poured into it. Once cooled, the result is a new mezuza. The largest created so far is 11 by 2.75 inches and the smallest is 3.54 by 0.75 inches.
Two years ago, they switched to a foundry near Krakow that works in brass, in part because it produces orders in just two weeks. The original foundry needed two months.
When the mezuzas come back to Mi Polin, Mr. Prugar then uses two kinds of sandpaper to polish and clean their surfaces. “Every single mezuza I polish by myself,” he said while wiping down one that was made off a trace from Czestochowa, Poland, with polishing paste and a blue cloth.
“We didn’t know that working with sculpture is like working with pictures on Photoshop — that cracks could be removed or added, that the structure could be unveiled or hidden behind the patina,” he said. He then polished both sides of the brass piece, one engraved with the address where the trace was found and the other with the Hebrew letter “shin” (the letter, found on every mezuza, symbolizes the name Shadai, the name of God). On the back of each one is a depression where the Torah prayer can be placed before the mezuza is affixed to a door frame.
Craft Meets History
The historical mezuzas, which range from $150 to $255 each — as well as mezuzas inspired by nature and Art Deco patterns, jewelry and other objects — are sold at the Mi Polin shop and website. They also are stocked by the shops at locations such as the Jewish Museum in New York, the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia and the Sydney Jewish Museum in Australia.
Mi Polin’s craftsmanship, of course, is rooted in the initial research necessary to find the traces of mezuzas.
In some cases, Mr. Prugar and Ms. Czernek may get a tip or a client will give them an address where relatives had lived before the war. They then pour over old maps, research the area’s Jewish history online and check things like Google Street View to see if the building or home looks intact.
Sometimes it is easy to gain access to a building, but other times it may have been condemned or even demolished. Mr. Prugar said that about a third of the traces they had found over the years no longer exist because the buildings had been renovated or razed.
Maya Tenebaum, a client in Los Angeles, hopes they will get to Radom, a city south of Warsaw, before it is too late. She has commissioned Mi Polin to create a mezuza from the trace at her father-in-law’s childhood home, which she and her husband discovered on a recent trip to Poland. Her father-in-law was the only surviving member of his family; the others died in the Holocaust.
“To have a piece of Judaica that is both contemporary and rooted in the prewar heritage is rare and deeply meaningful,” Ms. Tenenbaum wrote in an email. “That transformation — from void to vitality — is nothing short of sacred.” (She already has Mi Polin mezuzas cast from a trace found on the street in Lviv, Ukraine, where her grandfather grew up and from a building in Wroclaw, Poland, where her parents once lived.)
Jonathan Ornstein, the executive director of the Jewish Community Center in Krakow, whose shop sells several Mi Polin mezuzas that originated in the city, agreed.
“It symbolizes what we’re trying to do,” he said, “which is take this past that’s a very deep, rich history and in many ways defined by the tragedy of the Holocaust and say, ‘From that tragedy, we can find something that’s lost and help build something.’”
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