Take a a virtual tour of Bialystok with Tomasz Wisniewski, an expert in Jewish history of Podlasie region, who will guide viewers through the city space and history of Bialystok, a home to Jewish community from the mid-17th century. Join in to listen to the history of Jewish community of Bialystok: its role in the rapid development of the town in the 19th century, social and cultural life in early 20th century, and the fate of Jews during Soviet and Nazi occupation.
The tour is part of the regular “Zoom in” program of the Forum for Dialogue NGO.
Wisniewski has been working for more than 30 years to preserve the memory of the Jewish communities of Poland’s eastern borderland. He created the web site jewishbialystok.pl as an online museum of Jewish history in the region and he received the POLIN museum award in 2018.
He has written several books, including a guidebook to Jewish Bialystok and surroundings, and on his YouTube channel you can find more than 2,000 films presenting Jewish history of the region. He has documented Jewish cemeteries and runs the site bagnowka.pl, which collects data on almost 40,000 tombstones, mainly Jewish ones, and also presents other heritage information.
The 30th Krakow Jewish Culture Festival will take place on-site and also on-line.
Live-streamed events can be accessed on the new website: 30.jewishfestival.pl
They include the events held in the JCF Tent, concerts organized in the Museum of Urban Engineering, Collegium Maius and the Tempel synagogue.
After the end of the live stream, they will be able to be accessed in the event archives.
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.
The long-derelict 19th century synagogue in Kőszeg, western Hungary, is reopening to the public after a full-scale renovation that took place over the past two years. The synagogue, which is owned by the state, will become a cultural centre but also will be able to be used for religious services.
JHE’s Ruth Ellen Gruber is on the program of its first public event, Sunday August 28-29 — the opening of an exhibition about Philip (Fülöp) Schey (1798-1881), a Jewish philanthropist born in Kőszeg (known in German as Güns), who had grown rich as a textile merchant and later became a banker for the Hapsburgs. In 1859, Emperor Franz Joseph raised Schey to the Hungarian nobility — he was the first Jew to receive this honor and took the title Philip Schey von Koromla.
The exhibit is called “A Kőszeg Success Story: the Schey Family,” and it presents Philip Schey’s family, life and work: his economic and philanthropic activities, as well as his founding of institutions.
It begins at 3 p.m. and is organized by iAsk — the Institute of Advanced Studies in Kőszeg, which has played a role in the restoration of the building.
The opening is part of a two-day series of events, “Synagogue Week in Kőszeg,” including concerts, lectures, guided tours, and book presentations.
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 round-table discussion, plus optional walking tours through the “invisible” medieval Jewish history of Winchester. The Roundtable is free, the walking tours — at 10:30-11:30am or 11:30-12:30pm, cost £5.
The event event focuses on Licoricia of Winchester and the heritage and memory of medieval Anglo-Jewry.
The bronze statue of the remarkable Anglo-Jewish woman, Licoricia, was unveiled in Winchester in 2021. This is the most prominent heritage work carried out relating to medieval Anglo- Jewry.
The event, through a walking tour (£5) and free round table discussion, will consider the achievements of the Licoricia project, and the challenges of creating heritage in the absence of the built heritage that directly reflects the presence of medieval Winchester Jewry. It will also consider the public and educational issues raised when dealing with questions such as the Jewish role in medieval finance and hostile representations of Jews from the period based on religious bigotry. Addressing the key aims of the Licoricia project, participants will explore the potential of such commemoration to consider the roots of prejudice and discrimination, using this to promote tolerance, diversity, and female empowerment.
Please note that if you wish to attend both the walking tour and the roundtable event, you will need to register for each event separately.
Click here for booking and other details
Willesden Jewish Cemetery: 150 years of Heritage 1873 – 2023 Guided Walk
As part of the year long celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the Willesden Jewish Cemetery, this guided walk will tell the story of the establishment of the cemetery, highlighting the early years of the United Synagogue, the people who made it happen and their role in the community.
There were more than a thousand shtetls in today’s territories of Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus. The Second World War and the Holocaust obliterated the world of shtetls completely. Today, in Opatów—as well as in tens of other Polish towns—there are no more Jews left.
The OPOLIN Museum’s new temporary exhibition titled (post) JEWISH… demonstrates that Polish towns hide two parallel histories. The history of their Polish inhabitants is well known and remembered. The one of their Jewish neighbours who are no more is forgotten or left unsaid.
Guide in the exhibition will be the late Mayer Kirshenblatt, a painter who emigrated to Canada with his mother and brothers as a teenager, in 1934. Mayer recalls the shtetl of his youth, restoring vivid memories of the people, events, daily life and customs. His paintings—full of color, imagination and humor—show us a world that is no more. Looking at them, we learn about our shared Polish-Jewish history.
The exhibition also features a documentation of artistic interventions carried out in today’s Opatów, aimed at discovering and restoring the vestiges of the pre-war Jewish life.
Special guided tour of the temporary exhibition “(post)JEWISH… Shtetl Opatów Through the Eyes of Mayer Kirshenblatt” by curators Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Natalia Romik.
- 18 May (Saturday), 12 noon, BUY TICKET →
- Temporary exhibition “(post)JEWISH… Shtetl Opatów Throught the Eyes of Mayer Kirshenblatt”
- Tickets: regular 30PLN, reduced 25PLN
- Guided tour in English
As Mayer Kirshenblatt’s daughter, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett will talk about the history of pre-war Jewish towns, about their typical features and the role they played in the Jewish community. While analysing Mayer’s paintings, we will learn about the functions of the selected buildings, about old rituals and Polish-Jewish cohabitation. Natalia Romik, on the other hand, will talk about these towns’ postwar fate. While drawing our attention to the exhibition design and the selected artefacts, she will raise the issue of Jewish property and tell us what happened to it after the Holocaust.
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