The deadline to nominate a site for Europa Nostra’s Seven Most Endangered Heritage Sites list for 2020 has been extended until August 1 — so there is still time to propose a site.
Europa Nostra lobbies for monuments and heritage preservation, targets endangered sites and grants annual awards for restoration projects. It is a network of 250 member organizations across Europe, including heritage associations and foundations, plus 150 associated organizations (governmental bodies, local authorities and corporations) and also 1500 individual members.
Every two years it targets seven at-risk sites as an awareness-raising program to promote their restoration and preservation. “It identifies endangered monuments and sites in Europe and mobilizes public and private partners to find a viable future for those sites,” its web site says. “It serves as a catalyst for action and promotes the ‘power of example’.”
You can nominate a site with the support of an organization in your country that is a member of Europa Nostra or directly by joining EN’s pan-European network of member and associate organisations.
Click here for info and a link to the application form.
To date, the only Jewish heritage site on the list has been the synagogue in Subotica, Serbia, which was on the list in 2014.
The important art nouveau synagogue had been under fitful restoration for decades and, with grants from the Hungarian government and others, it was finally rededicated after a full restoration last year.
We feel it important to nominate Jewish heritage sites for this program.
As we have pointed out, Jewish heritage sites in Europe have often been overlooked, ignored, and played down.
Thousands of synagogues, prayer houses, Jewish cemeteries, and other sites of Jewish built heritage were destroyed or severely damaged before, during, and after World War II — often deliberately targeted, along with the Jewish communities who held them dear.
As anyone who has explored Jewish Heritage Europe will be aware, ruined synagogues and overgrown and abandoned Jewish cemeteries still form part of the landscape (and cityscapes) across parts of eastern and central Europe in particular.
Yet, a 1997 book on Europe’s lost or destroyed architectural heritage (Lost Europe: Images of a Vanished World, by Jean Loussier and Robin Langley Sommer), made no mention at all of the destruction of Jewish historical sites.
And even today, an online exhibit on Heritage at Risk just published on its web site by Europeana.eu fails to mention any Jewish historic site — not even in its section on the devastation of built heritage caused by war.
There are campaigns under way to raise funds and awareness to save some of these places, and we have written about many of them.
“Heritage at Risk” lists such as Europa Nostra’s Seven Endangered List and the World Monuments Fund’s Watch List (as well as the Foundation for Jewish Heritage list) can serve to bring these sites and their importance as sites of European (not just Jewish) heritage the broader global attention they deserve.