A conference looking at the handling of Jewish cemeteries on both sides of the border between Germany and Poland — both in communist East Germany and Poland after WW2 and since 1989 in post-reunification Germany and post-communist Poland. Register by November 2.
Program
Welcome: Dr. Peter Bahl, State Historical Association for the Mark Brandenburg eV, and Dr. Magdalena Gebala, German Cultural Forum for Eastern Europe eV
Introductory presentation On the situation of the Jewish cemeteries in the Soviet Zone and the GDR, Dr. Monika Schmidt, Berlin
Presentation of the project Jewish cemeteries in Poland in the areas of the former province of Brandenburg, Dr. Magdalena Abraham-Diefenbach and Dr. des. Anke Geißler-Grünberg, both Frankfurt (Oder)
Documentary film Jewish cemeteries in Poland , director: Dietmar Barsig, 2009, 4:05 min., Broadcast in Kulturzeit on November 18, 2009; with the kind permission of ZDF
Followed by a panel discussion with Dr. Magdalena Abraham-Diefenbach, Dr. des. Anke Geißler-Grünberg, Dr. Monika Schmidt and Andrzej Kirmiel, director of the Museum of the Meseritzer Land, Międzyrzecz / Meseritz
Moderation: Dr. Peter Bahl
The event will be held in German and Polish and will be interpreted.
Important NOTE
Limited places. To participate in the event, a confirmed registration up to and including Tuesday, November 2, 2021 by email to ger.wei@web.de (preferred) or on the telephone number (030) 413 82 19 (with AB) is necessary. Proof of COVID vaccination is required to enter. A minimum distance of 1.5 m must be maintained. Wearing an OP or FFP2 mask is mandatory for all participants.
A cooperative event between the Chair for Monument Studies at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), the Chair for Modern History (German-Jewish History) at the University of Potsdam , the State Historical Association for the Mark Brandenburg eV and the German Cultural Forum Eastern Europe eV
The picture shows: Broken tombstone in the Jewish cemetery in Drossen / Ośno Lubuskie, 2021, © Peggy Lohse
The annual conference on Jewish cultural heritage in Slovakia can be followed online at https://www.facebook.com/zidianaslovensku.
The annual Eugen Barkany prize will be awarded.
A conversation with Helise Lieberman (Executive Director of the Taube Center for Jewish Life & Learning Foundation ) and Dr. Glenn Kurtz (author of Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film).
The Webinar is part of the Synagogues in Poland project of the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland.
Register here — https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_7lcg5DifQNWwuVVd2gXKLQ
Join JHE’s Ruth Ellen Gruber; the architect, artist and designer, Natalia Romik; the director of the Okopowa Jewish cemetery in Warsaw, Witold Wrzosiński; and the CEO of the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland (FODZ) Piotr Puchta for a wide-ranging Webinar centering on Jewish heritage preservation, future prospects, challenges, and possible approaches.
This Webinar is the third and final Webinar in a series that has been part of the project “Virtual Connections to Material Jewish Heritage in Poland” carried out by FODZ, aimed at fostering public awareness of synagogues, cemeteries and other Jewish built heritage via digital models and detailed virtual tours of selected buildings.
Please register for the webinar here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/…/reg…/WN_YsMCMndzQ1SbllwVPi0X_A
Click to access the project web site and the virtual tours of selected Jewish historical sites in Kraśnik, Łęczna, Łancut, Olsztyn, Orla, Przysucha, Sejny, and Zamość.
Opening of the exhibition Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival — showcasing the work of the architect, artist, and researcher Natalia Romik about the places where Jews hid during the Holocaust.
The exhibition will run until July 17, Tuesday-Sunday, 12-8 pm.
Baden bei Wien – Baden by Vienna – was long a popular spa and summer guests were originally attracted by the glamorous presence of the Imperial Court.
Many of these families who spent their summers in Baden had Jewish roots. They built villas in a variety of styles – historicist, art nouveau and modernist – a fascinating mixture and shaped summer life in Baden until 1938.
This exhibition is dedicated to ten families and their villas.
Click here for an interactive map with the villas
The Synagogue in Kobersdorf reopens after a three-year restoration process. It will be a cultural and educational centre, with a focus on local Jewish history and heritage.
There will be a ceremony to install an information signboard at the Jewish cemetery in Nowogród, Poland.
The signboard was created thanks to the support provided to Friends of Jewish Heritage in Poland by the actress Gwyneth Paltrow, a descendant of 19th century Rabbi Hersz Pelterowicz, rabbi of the Nowogród synagogue district.
Archival research was contributed by Professor Glenn Dynner of Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York and Gniewomir Zajączkowski of FODZ.
The annual “Open Jewish Homes” Holocaust commemoration event in more than a dozen towns and cities in the Netherlands.
Small-scale, locally organized commemorative events takes place in homes where Jews (or members of the resistance) lived before, during, or just after World War II.
The web site states:
The focus is on Jewish life in these houses before, during and immediately after the war. History comes to life during Open Jewish Homes. Direct witnesses, descendants and connoisseurs tell stories about persecution, resistance and liberation on the basis of photographs, films, diary fragments, poems, literature and music. […]
The Jewish Cultural Quarter organised in 2012 the first edition of Open Jewish Homes in Amsterdam. Since then local work groups have been organising Open Jewish Homes in various other cities in the country as well. Everyone is free to initiate Open Jewish Homes in his or her place of residence.
Open Jewish Homes was conceived as a way to engage “in real life” with the interactive Digital Monument to the Jewish Community in the Netherlands, which personalizes the more than 104,000 victims of Holocaust in the Netherlands. Every victim has a personal page — with their home address as well as photos and other material.
Click here to see the program in the various locations
Bridging Divides. Rupture and Continuity in Polish Jewish History
In Honor of the 80th anniversary of the “Aktion Reinhard” and the 75th anniversary of the Jewish Historical Institute
Watch the conference on YouTube:
Opening ceremony: https://youtu.be/J3Hx6eh6cng
Day 2: https://youtu.be/D29zQRijkqM
Day 3: https://youtu.be/Xyonp03JUfk
Closing discussion: https://youtu.be/Gk0pqyRJIo0
PROGRAM
MONDAY, May 23rd
Opening – 17:00 CET
Welcome – Glenn Dynner, Monika Krawczyk, Katarzyna Person
Opening keynote – Samuel Kassow
TUESDAY, May 24th
Session 1 – 9:00 – 10:30 CET
Evolving Traditions: Polish Jewish Spirituality Chair and Respondent: Glenn Dynner
Alison B. Curry (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
The Last Honor: Jewish Ritual and the Cemetery in the Warsaw Region Between the Interwar Period and the Second World War
Samuel Glauber-Zimra (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
The Séance in Polish Jewish Life: A Case Study of Rupture and Continuity
Gabriella Licskó (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
Alexander Hasidism before and after the Holocaust
Session 2 – 10:45 – 12:15 CET
Women in Polish Jewish Religious Life Chair and Respondent: Daniel Reiser
Tzipora Weinberg (New York University)
Still Small Voices: Female Prevalence in Polish Rabbinic Literature, 1900-1945
Elly Moseson (YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)
Mar’in bishin: The Sexual Nightmare of Eastern European Jewish Women
Glenn Dynner (Sarah Lawrence College)
The Polish Hasidah: Beyond Masculine Definitions of Hasidism Partners: Part of the program:
Session 3 – 13:15 – 14:45 CET
Polish Jewry in Literature and Film Chair and Respondent: Karolina Szymaniak
Daniel Bouskila (Yeshiva University)
Asonovski, Szibucz and Buczacz: SY Agnon’s Theological Meditations on the Plight of Eastern European Jewry
Sarah Ellen Zarrow (Western Washington University)
Jewish Life in Poland as Documented on Film: Continuities and Ruptures
Aleksandra Kremer (Harvard University)
Holocaust Poems in Polish-Language Journals before 1950
Session 4 – 15:00 – 16:00 CET
Panel on Archives and Museums Chair and Respondent: Stephen Naron
Jonathan Brent (Executive Director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)
The oldest Jewish archival institution
Monika Krawczyk (Director of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute)
Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw: ‘Mother’ of All Jewish Museums in Poland
Albert Stankowski (Director of the Warsaw Ghetto Museum)
Challenges for New Warsaw Ghetto Museum
Zygmunt Stępiński (Director of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews)
POLIN Museum – Shrine for History of Polish Jews
16:15 CET – Guided tour of the Jewish Historical Institute’s permanent exhibition: What we were unable to shout out to the world
19:30 CET – Screening of Who Will Write Our History in Kino Muranów
WEDNESDAY, May 25th
Session 1 – 9:00 – 11:00 CET
Writing the Polish Jewish Self Chair and Respondent: Francois Guesnet
Maria Ferenc (Jewish Historical Institute) Partners: Part of the program:
Life and what comes after. Study of biography and memory of Mordechai Anielewicz as a challenge to historiographical divides
Yaron Nir Freisager (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Josef Zelkowicz and the Circle of Intellectuals in the Lodz Ghetto
Lidia Zessin-Jurek (Czech Academy of Sciences)
“Three times a refugee” – exile as a leading motif in the memoirs of Polish Jews
Ula Madej-Krupitski (McGill University)
Polish Jewish émigrés and the ‘old country’
Session 2 – 10:45 – 12:45 CET
Reframing Antisemitism and the Holocaust Chair and Respondent: Katarzyna Person
Ania Switzer (University of British Columbia)
Antisemitism as a cultural code in Poland
Jan Burzlaff (Harvard University)
Surviving as a Social Process
Alicja Podbielska (Yale University)
“Our feelings toward Jews have not changed”: Polish underground press on help and rescue
Lea Ganor (Bar-Ilan University)
Life Stories of Holocaust Survivors with Polish and European roots who served as Air Crew Members in the Israeli Air Force
Session 3 – 13:45 – 14:45 CET
Polish Jewish Philanthropic Networks Chair and Respondent: Anna Cichopek-Gajraj
Karolina Kołpak (Yale University)
The history of the Warsaw Kolonie Letnie Society, 1882-1939
Samir Saadi (University of Warsaw)
The HIAS in Poland in the II Republic and after the Holocaust (until 1949): comparative approach
Dikla Yogev (University of Toronto)
The Bais Yaakov Network – A Case Study of the Multiple Dimensions of Orthodox Community
Session 4 – 15:00 – 16:15 CET
Presentation on Jewish Historical Institute’s resources Chair and respondent: Andrzej Żbikowski Partners: Part of the program: Library – Marzena Zawanowska
Heritage Documentation Department – Alicja Mroczkowska
Archive – Michał Czajka
Art Department – Michał Krasicki
16:30 CET – Keynote by Naomi Seidman
19:00 CET – Zisl Slepovitch Ensemble outdoor concert in Krasiński Garden
The Songs from Testimonies project collects and records songs and poems discovered in the accounts found in the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. The musician-in-residence, Zisl Slepovitch, took the songs, conducted research about their origins, then arranged and recorded versions with his ensemble, featuring Sashe Lurje.
The performers:
Joshua Camp – accordion, piano, additional vocals
Dmitry Ishenko – contrabass, additional vocals
Craig Judelman – violin, additional vocals
Sasha Lurje – leading vocals
D. Zisl Slepovitch – composer, clarinet, vocals
THURSDAY, May 26th
Guided tour of Jewish Warsaw – 9:00 CET
The overwhelming presence of the Warsaw Ghetto
Guide: Olga Szymańska, Education Department
Closing of the Conference – 11:30 CET
Concluding Remarks and State of the Field discussion
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