Jewish Heritage Europe

Calendar

Aug
28
Sun
Nowy Sacz Names Memorial @ People Not Numbers Memorial
Aug 28 @ 16:00 – 17:00
Nowy Sacz Names Memorial @ People Not Numbers Memorial | Nowy Sącz | Małopolskie | Poland

Dedication of the new memorial listing 12,0000 Holocaust victims, a project of Ludzie, Nie Liczby-People, Not Numbers, Sądecki sztetl and Dariusz Popiela.

 

Sep
21
Wed
Białystok Cemetery Restoration Project webinar @ online-zoom
Sep 21 @ 19:00 – 20:00
Białystok Cemetery Restoration Project webinar @ online-zoom

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.

Click here to register

Nov
30
Wed
“Unsettled Heritage” event @ online
Nov 30 @ 20:00 – 21:30
"Unsettled Heritage" event @ online

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.

Jan
24
Tue
Jewish Cultural Heritage in Slovakia (online) @ Online
Jan 24 @ 10:00 – 13:00

The eighth annual conference dedicated to Jewish cultural heritage in Slovakia, including major projects and activities — and the people behind them.

This year, a focus will be the restoration of the synagogue in Trenčín, which is implemented with the support of the EHP Grant (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway) with co-financing from the state budget of the Slovak community and resources of the Jewish community.

The conference will be available online at https://www.facebook.com/zidianaslovensku and https://tachles.tv/

Program

 

Jan
25
Thu
Places of Difficult Heritage, Education, and Human Rights @ online
Jan 25 @ 18:00 – 20:00
 
The webinar will discuss issues such as:
 
Can places of difficult heritage—such as areas of former forced labor/concentration/death camps, prisons, juvenile detention centers, sites of executions, desecrated cemeteries, or prayer houses—play a role in today’s education about human rights and in shaping civic attitudes? How to adapt such institutions and places accordingly? How do we manage them to use their educational potential fully? Can they become spaces for civic mobilization and sensitization of different generations to the past, present, and future experiences of persecuted minority groups, discriminated against, or exposed to social exclusion? Does such a model work in Norway and is there a way that it could also be implemented in Poland and CEE? What can we learn from each other? Is there a wider EU perspective we can learn from?
 
🔎 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.
 
Guests/presenters will be: Agnieszka Jabłońska (Urban Memory Foundation), Aleksandra Janus (Fundacja Zapomniane), Magdalena Rubenfeld (FestivALT), Karolina Jakowenko (Brama Cukermana), Mats Jørgen Nesjø (Falstad Centre), and Johannes Börmann (European Comission).
 
🇬🇧 The meeting will be conducted in English with simultaneous interpretation to Polish. 🇵🇱
 
🕒 PROGRAM 🕒
18.00–18.15: Welcome and introduction of the discussed terminology
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
 
 
Feb
21
Wed
Slovak synagogues in postcards book launch @ Jewish Culture Museum Bratislava
Feb 21 @ 17:00
Slovak synagogues in postcards book launch @ Jewish Culture Museum Bratislava | Bratislava | Bratislavský kraj | Slovakia

The book “Slovak Synagogues on Old Postcards” will be launched in Bratislava.
The book includes more than 270 old postcards of Jewish places of worship.
Opposite each postcard is a brief history of the Jewish community and synagogue of a particular city or village.
The book is written in English and Slovak. Historical settlement names appear in both Hungarian and German.
***
If you plan to attend the launch, please  confirm your arrival to the contacts in the booking as the number of places is limited.

You can buy the publication directly on the spot, or ordered via the following email address:
jdesbook@gmail.com

Mar
19
Tue
Official Opening of the restored Žatec Synagogue as a cultural space @ Synagogue in Zatec
Mar 19 @ 16:00
Official Opening of the restored Žatec Synagogue as a cultural space @ Synagogue in Zatec | Ústecký kraj | Czechia

After many decades, the synagogue and rabbinical house in Žatec will be ceremonially opened. Both monuments have undergone complete reconstruction in recent years and will now serve as a museum and cultural space.

The celebrations will include performances by the Žatec Occasional Choir and the Camerata children’s choir at the ZUŠ in Žatec.

Long empty and in deteriorating condition, the synagogue and rabbi’s house were bought in 2013 by  Daniel Černý, who from 2019 oversaw a full-scale renovation of the buildings that was completed in 2022. Most of the €2 million costs of the project were covered with grants from the state and the EU.

The rescue and restoration of the synagogue won the Patrimonium pro futuro Award in the Monument Protection category. 

NOTE: The  program on March 22 will begin at 5 p.m.

 

Mar
20
Wed
Journeys to Treblinka @ Holocaust Centre North Huddersfield, and online
Mar 20 @ 17:00 – 18:00

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).

 

Mar
22
Fri
Official Opening of the restored Žatec Synagogue as a cultural space @ Synagogue in Zatec
Mar 22 @ 16:00
Official Opening of the restored Žatec Synagogue as a cultural space @ Synagogue in Zatec | Ústecký kraj | Czechia

After many decades, the synagogue and rabbinical house in Žatec will be ceremonially opened. Both monuments have undergone complete reconstruction in recent years and will now serve as a museum and cultural space.

The celebrations will include performances by the Žatec Occasional Choir and the Camerata children’s choir at the ZUŠ in Žatec.

Long empty and in deteriorating condition, the synagogue and rabbi’s house were bought in 2013 by  Daniel Černý, who from 2019 oversaw a full-scale renovation of the buildings that was completed in 2022. Most of the €2 million costs of the project were covered with grants from the state and the EU.

The rescue and restoration of the synagogue won the Patrimonium pro futuro Award in the Monument Protection category. 

NOTE: The  program on March 22 will begin at 5 p.m.

 

Mar
28
Thu
Memory Activism webinar @ Online
Mar 28 @ 18:30 – 19:30
Memory Activism webinar @ Online
A webinar on the topic of memory activism related to Jewish heritage and Jewish history in Poland.
 
Participation in the event is free of charge.
 
Registration is required, at this link: https://tinyurl.com/MemoryActivism
 
Discuss will include the results of qualitative research on memory activism in Poland conducted in 2023. The panel will consider the importance of their key findings and try to answer a number of important questions: what are the motivations of people engaging in such activities? What do they need and what kinds of challenges do they face on a daily basis? How the wider phenomenon is impacted by the fact that most activists work on a voluntary basis?
 
Also: the perspective of activists. How do they perceive their actions, how do they define them and what kind of changes do they want to bring about?
 
Participants will include: Agnieszka Jabłońska (managing director of the @urbanmemoryfoundation), Aleksandra Janus (president of the @fundacjazapomniane), Magda Rubenfeld Koralewska (co-director of FestivALT), and Katarzyna Fereniec-Błońska, member of the research team that carried out the study under under the aegis of the „Curiosity” agency.
 
The meeting will be conducted in English.
 
The event is co-organized with the @galiciajewishmuseumkrakow and the Research Center for Memory Cultures as part of the „NeDiPa: Negotiating Difficult Pasts” project, which FestivALT implements together with the Zapomniane Foundation and the Urban Memory Foundation, thanks to the support of the European Union under the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values program (CERV).
 
 

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