This workshop explores spatial aspects of the experiences of German-Jews during 1930s, in Germany and in transit. In highlighting the convoluted relations between place and identity—and the essential influence of these relations on the history of emotions, thoughts and culture—the workshop focuses on the spaces that shaped German-Jewish self-perceptions in the face of National Socialism. While the workshop discusses specific locations, it also examines the concepts of space and place as analytical tools to enhance the historical understanding of Jewish life under Nazi rule and Jewish responses to Nazi persecution. In so doing, the workshop seeks to scrutinize and complicate recent trends in the study of German-Jewish history.
The Keynote Lecture will be given by Professor Marion Kaplan, a renowned researcher of German-Jewish history in modern times and one of the first to address questions of place and space in the experience of German Jews under Nazism.
Organisers: David Jünger (Universität Rostock), Ofer Ashkenazi (The Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History), Björn Siegel (Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden) und Katrin Steffen (Sussex Weidenfeld Institut of Jewish Studies)
This workshop takes place IN PERSON. To comply with current regulations to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, please register in advance by contacting Dr. David Jünger (david.juenger@uni-rostock.de).
PROGRAM
Thursday, 12 May
12:30–13:00
Introduction
13:00–15:00
1. Creating Spaces of Memory
Gerald Lamprecht (Graz)
Entangled Memories. Jewish and non-Jewish Discourses on the Great War in Interwar Austria
Katrin Steffen (Brighton)
East German-Jewish Spaces in Berlin. Jewish Heritage Societies (Heimatvereine) and their diasporic milieu in the 1930ies
Joachim Schlör (Southampton)
Brückenallee 33, Berlin
15:30-17:30
2. Being In-Between
David Jünger (Rostock)
From Myth to Reality. German Jews Discover Palestine (1933–1938)
Charlie Knight (Southampton)
Mapping your coordinates. Space and Transnationality in Refugee Correspondence
Björn Siegel (Hamburg/Graz)
Ships to Nowhere. A Maritime Space and Its Relevance to Decode Jewish Refugees’ experiences in the 1930s
18:00-19:30
Keynote Lecture
Marion Kaplan (New York)
The Emotional Dissonance of Spaces. German Jewish Refugees in Portugal
Hörsaal 218, Universitätshauptgebäude, Universitätsplatz 1
Friday 13 May
09:00-11:30
3. Vanishing Jewish Spaces
Guy Miron (Jerusalem)
Synagogues, Cemeteries, Sports facilities. Jewish spaces and places in Nazi Germany
Teresa Walch (Greensboro)
Rendering Germany ‘judenrein’: Space, Ideology, and German Jews in the 1930s
Kim Wünschmann (Hamburg)
Filming the destruction of the Munich Main Synagogue in June 1938. A spatial history-approach to the reading of visual sources
Miriam Rürup (Potsdam)
Dejudaization before Deportation. The removal of Jewish traces in urban topographies of German cities
12:00-14:00
4. Visualizing Jewish Spaces
Robert Mueller-Stahl (Potsdam)
Capturing crisis. German-Jewish private travel photography between the Weimar Republic and Nazism
Sarah Wobick-Segev (Hamburg)
Being and Not Being in Time and Place
Ofer Aschkenazi (Tel Aviv)
The Displacement of the Ordinary. The German-Jewish Home in Photography Narratives of Emigration
14:15-15:30
Round table: Final Discussion
with Sandwich lunch
A gathering of Lithuanian Jews and descendants, which includes an academic conference, a cultural fest, guided tours to Jewish heritage in several towns and cities around the country — Vilnius, Kaunas, Panevėžys, Šeduva, Pakruojis — and more.
Click here to see the full program
Pre-registration is required by filling out the following form:
The annual “Open Jewish Houses/Houses of Resistance” commemorative program takes place in a score of towns and cities around the Netherlands.
Storytellers, visitors and residents share stories in houses where Jews or members of the resistance lived and worked before, during and just after the Second World War.
Closing event of the conservation and restoration camps held this year in the Jewish Cemetery of Alba Iolia, as part of the project Conservation and restoration of the monumental funeral stones of the Jewish cemetery in Alba Iulia.
An international conference/workshop on: “Toledo in the management of the New Jewish Archaeology in Europe”.
Organised by the Sephardic Museum in Toledo, the conference falls within a research project that has among its tasks the dissemination of the important archaeological findings that have been produced in recent years in the area of the Jewish quarter of Toledo, in addition to highlighting the city and the Spanish-Jewish and Sephardic heritage, nationally and internationally. The objective of the conference will be “not only to create a scientific space for the exchange of academic news at a local, national and European level, but also to highlight the singular and unique value of the city of Toledo within the archaeological map of Jewish heritage in Spain.”
JHE’s Ruth Ellen Gruber, the author of travel books and articles on Jewish heritage in Europe, will be in conversation — “A Journey between Islamic and Jewish Europe” — with the British Muslim writer Tharik Hussain, the author of travel literature on Islamic heritage in Europe, as part of a three day series of meetings called “Invitation to the Voyage.” The conversation will be led by Prof. Shaul Bassi.
The meetings are held in collaboration between the Fondazione dell’Albero d’Oro and the Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, and on the occasion of the last days of the ‘Nicolò Manucci. the Marco Polo of India’ exhibition.
The venue is the drawing room of Palazzo Vendramin Grimani.
The meetings will be open to the public, free of charge upon reservation. Simultaneous translation into Italian will be available for each meeting.
Click here for full information and program and to reserve a place
The Centre for Religion and Heritage of the University of Groningen will host a half-day public symposium to launch the Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Heritage in Contemporary Europe. This event will also inaugurate a new European project on minority religious heritage.
The event takes place in person and also online. Click HERE to register
The organizers state:
The Handbook provides a state-of-the-art guide by leading international scholars, policy makers and heritage practitioners. With 46 chapters, we cannot address all the contributions, thus we have chosen to concentrate on those which examine how religious communities are using their rich heritage to make new meanings for themselves in Europe. Our focus will be on Jewish, Muslim and Christian heritage. We want to think together about the challenges facing these communities, as they grapple with being Jewish or Muslim minorities in a historically Christian landscape, or with being a minority of practicing Christians in the highly secularized society, such as that of Northern Netherlands. Reflecting on these questions together with our Handbook authors will aid the start of a new project in the Erasmus Plus program called European Pathways to Minority Religious Heritage (Miretage). Over three years we are exploring how minority religious heritage can be taught as a co-creative activity between heritage institutions, creative organizations and minority communities. On hand to participate in the symposium are partners from Storytelling Center Amsterdam, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Moslim Archief Rotterdam, KU Leuven, Future for Religious
Click here to see the program for the January 23 event
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.
Book launch of “Zohar: A Photographic Journey through the Places of Italian Jewish Culture,” with the author Francesco Maria Colombo, Ferruccio de Bortoli, President of the Shoah Memorial Foundation, and Sandro Parmiggiani, editor of the book.
The book is under the patronage of the Foundation for Jewish Cultural Heritage in Italy and is enriched by contributions from Sandro Parmiggiani, Adachiara Zevi, Alberto Manguel, and Dario Disegni.
Free admission with reservation.
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.
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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
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