Dr. Maroš Borský, director of the Jewish Community Museum in Bratislava, Slovakia will give an overview of the remarkable life of Jewish heritage pioneer Eurgen Bárkány, the collection he built, and its future. He will also discuss current synagogue restoration projects in Slovakia and major achievements of the past decade.
Eugen Bárkány (1885–1967) was a civil engineer and successful entrepreneur during the interwar period – and passionate collector in Eastern Slovakia. In 1928, he became a director of the Slovakia´s first Jewish museum in Prešov, which was a private initiative of the Jewish museum association, which Bárkány chaired. The museum assembled a remarkable collection, which survived the war and from 1952–1993 was stored at the State Jewish Museum in Prague, before it was returned to the Jewish Community of Prešov.
Bárkány hid in Budapest in 1942–1945 and returned to Prešov in 1945, where he was subsequently persecuted by the Communist regime, which expelled him from his city. In 1955, Bárkány settled down in Bratislava, where he lived in humble conditions. He continued his survey of Jewish heritage and travelled extensively around Slovakia. In Bratislava, Bárkány assembled another Judaica collection in the Neolog synagogue, and in 1966 a new Jewish museum was planned. This project was not fulfilled, the synagogue was demolished in 1969 and the collection deposited at the Slovak National Museum, from where it returned only in 2002. In 2012, the Jewish Community Museum was established in Bratislava´s only synagogue, which remains in use as an Orthodox house of worship. Since 2016, the Eugen Bárkány Prize has been awarded annually for achievements in Jewish heritage preservation by the Federation of Jewish Communities in Slovakia.
The Jewish Community Museum in Bratislava dedicated in 2018 and 2019 two exhibition projects to Eugen Bárkány and Slovakia´s first Jewish museum in Prešov. The precious collection has remained in the research and exhibition focus of the Museum.
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A native of Bratislava, Dr. Maroš Borský studied art history and Jewish studies in Bratislava, Regensburg, London, Jerusalem, and Heidelberg. From 2001 to 2006, Dr. Borský was the curator at the Slovak National Museum-Museum of Jewish Culture, where he founded and oversaw Synagoga Slovaca, the documentation project of synagogue architecture in Slovakia. Dr. Borský is the director of the Jewish Community Museum and Jewish Cultural Institute in Bratislava.
WEBINAR via ZOOM
Professor Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, the Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in discussion with Zygmunt Stępiński, the Director of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
The conversation will include a 45-minute discussion, followed by a 15-minute Q&A session where you can ask questions submitted before or during the broadcast.
The 17th annual Singer’s Warsaw festival — many on-site and online events are on the program, including concerts, lectures, guided tours, theatrical performances, and more.
On the program, click the title for more information and registration details.
More than 1,000 fragments of Jewish headstones that the Communist authorities removed in the 1960s from the Jewish cemetery on Zagorska Street and used to build a railway station platform will be exhibited to the public.
Excavations have been going on for six months to recover them, and they will eventually used to create a memorial.
At 5 pm, at the Muzeum Cafe Jerozolima, there will be a presentation about the history of the cemetery.
A special exhibit marking the 20th anniversary of the underground complex designed by the architect Martin Kvasnica containing remnants of Bratislava’s Old Jewish Cemetery, which was destroyed in 1944, — 23 graves surrounding the Chatam Sofer’s tomb.
Rabbi Moshe Schreiber, known as the Chatam Sofer (or Chasam Sofer), was a renowned rabbi and scholar who was born in Frankfurt am Main on 26 September 1762 (7 Tishrei 5523).
Open
Friday 10:00 – 16:00
Sunday 10:00 – 16:00
The 25th edition of the “Preserving Memory” awards honoring non-Jewish Poles who care for Jewish heritage in Poland.
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.
A number of events are marking the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, including a conference, exhibit, monument dedication, at the POLIN Museum, Warsaw’s Okopowa Jewish cemetery, and elsewhere.
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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