The “Zoom in on the Forum” series of webinars by the School of Dialogue, presents a discussion about the restoration work at the Bagnowka Jewish cemetery in Bialystok Poland — we have posted a number of times about the project.
Amy Degen and Heidi M. Szpek will share their work as members of the Bialystok Cemetery Restoration project (BCRP). Both have been involved in salvaging, documenting, and restoring headstones in the cemetery as well as raising awareness about Jewish history of Bialystok.
This summer, the BCRP carried out work at the cemetery for the first time since the pandemic began.
Among other things, more than 100 headstones dating from the early 19th century and originally located in the destroyed Rabbinical cemetery, were unearthed and rescued from under a mound of earth where they had been buried during communist times, when the cemetery was turned into a park.
A conversation with Yechiel Weizman on his book
Unsettled Heritage: Living Next to Poland’s Material Jewish Traces after the Holocaust (Ithaca, 2022)
In Unsettled Heritage, Yechiel Weizman explores what happened to the thousands of abandoned Jewish cemeteries and places of worship that remained in Poland after the Holocaust. He asks how postwar Polish society in small, provincial towns perceived, experienced, and interacted with the physical traces of former Jewish neighbors. Combining archival research into hitherto unexamined sources and anthropological field work, the book uncovers the concrete and symbolic fate of Poland’s material Jewish remnants and shows how their presence became the main vehicle through which Polish society was confronted with the memory of the Jews and their annihilation. Leading the conversation with Weizman will be Monika Rice, and joining them will be Alon Confino and Amos Goldberg.
This event will be held via ZOOM Webinar.
Registration is required, register in advance here.
This is the 20th Edition of the Singer’s Warsaw Festival, Warsaw
The premier Jewish culture festival in Poland, aside from the Krakow Jewish Culture Festival. It celebrates its 20th edition jubilee this year.
Theatre performances, concerts, films, guided tours, lectures, food, books — and more.
Click here for the full program (including some preliminary events in Bilgoraj)
Barnet Libraries presents: The History and Residents of Willesden Jewish Cemetery.
The cemetery is a designated Heritage Site and celebrated its 150th anniversary in June this year.
Many of the people who are buried there were prominent in the fields of industry, commerce, science and the arts.
It is hoped that this talk will be a catalyst to people visiting the grounds and seeing the work delivered by the cemetery’s small team and dedicated volunteers.
On December 11-12, the Liberation Route Europe Foundation is organizing a memory project conference titled “When Memory Meets Dialogue – Role of Remembrance Sites and Contemporary Challenges” in Krakow, Poland. This event, in partnership with Oscar Schindler’s Enamel Factory, a branch of the Museum of Krakow, is part of the EU-funded European Days of Jewish Culture (EDJC) 2023, coordinated by the AEPJ.
The conference agenda encompasses sessions focusing on Jewish and WWII heritage. Discussions will revolve around memory transmission and the contemporary significance of remembrance sites. The primary goal is to offer a meaningful platform for idea exchange, nurture cross-cultural understanding, and stimulate international discourse on historical memory and contemporary challenges. As part of the programme, participants can also explore guided tours and historical city walks in Krakow.
More than 80 years ago, the headstones that once stood in the Brest-Litovsk Jewish cemetery, in the south of Belarus, were desecrated and used for other purposes. More than 1200 headstones have been discovered over the last 20 years. They will be used to create a stunning memorial.
The Together Plan’s January 14th event will focus on this project.
How did the cemetery disappear?
What happened to the matzevot?
How did The Together Plan become involved?
What has been done so far and what are the plans for the future?
Where are the 1249 salvaged headstones at the moment?
How does this memorial play a pivotal role in Jewish history?
How will this support the functioning Jewish community in Brest today?
Click here to find the link to register
USA 11:00 PT / 14:00 ET / UK 19:00 / Israel 21:00
Speakers will look for answers to these and other questions during the webinar, entirely devoted to the role that places of difficult heritage can play in multidimensional education about human rights. They include memory activists, the academia, and individuals actively working with difficult heritage sites on a daily basis.
The meeting will be conducted in English with simultaneous interpretation to Polish. 
PROGRAM 18.15–18.35: Falstad Centre
18.35–19.00: Engaged Memory Consortium Poland & NeDiPa
19.00–19.15: The EU perspective: site-specific education about past violences and Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values programme of the EU?
19.15–19.45: Discussion – what the Polish and Norwegian partners can learn from each other? Is there a universal model?
19:15–20.00: Q&A
Open Day to share plans for Welsh Jewish Heritage Centre in Merthyr Tydfil.
The public is invited to explore Merthyr Tydfil’s historic synagogue and help shape plans to create a Welsh Jewish Heritage Centre.
There will be tours of the synagogue throughout the day, along with music from a Welsh klezmer band and a talk on the history of Merthyr’s once-thriving
Jewish community.
The project team will be on hand to find out what local people think of the plans for the future of the building, and record their memories of its past life.
Merthyr Tydfil Synagogue was built in the 1870s and is the oldest purpose-built synagogue surviving in Wales. After the congregation left in 1983, its condition deteriorated. The Foundation for Jewish Heritage purchased it in 2019 and the Prince of Wales, now King Charles III, visited in 2021. The following year, the Foundation secured funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Welsh government and Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council to develop the plans.
Since 2007, forensic archaeological investigations have revealed new evidence of the crimes undertaken at the notorious Treblinka Extermination Camp in Poland.
In this talk, Professor Caroline Sturdy Colls will outline some of the key findings of this research and discuss the ways they have inspired Holocaust survivors and their descendants based in the UK to undertake their own journeys to commemorate their loved ones.
Professor Caroline Sturdy Colls’ pioneering research focuses on the application of interdisciplinary approaches to the investigation of Holocaust landscapes. She conducted the first forensic archaeological investigations at Treblinka Extermination and Labour Camps, the results of which will be presented in her forthcoming book Finding Treblinka. She is also the author of several other books including Holocaust Archaeologies: Approaches and Future Directions (2015), the Handbook on Missing Persons (2016) and ‘Adolf Island: The Nazi Occupation of Alderney (2022).
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