Jewish Heritage Europe

Calendar

Feb
23
Tue
Legacy of the Shtetl: Investigating Polish-Belarusian-Ukrainian Borderlands @ Online Zoom event
Feb 23 @ 18:00 – 19:00
Legacy of the Shtetl: Investigating Polish-Belarusian-Ukrainian Borderlands @ Online Zoom event | Bentonville | Arkansas | United States
The Legacy of the Shtetl: Investigating Polish-Belarusian-Ukrainian Borderlands
with Dr Magdalena Waligórska, and Dr Natalia Romik, respondent, and with Prof François Guesnet, Chair 
 
Co-organized by the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies and  the UCL Institute of Jewish Studies
 
Magdalena Waligórska takes us on a journey to the post-1945 Polish-Ukrainian-Belorusian borderlands where she explores small towns which had a predominantly Jewish population before the Second World War and the Holocaust. Here, Jewish property both entirely fell under the control of the new ethnic majority and remained a “disinherited heritage” that continues to cause dissonance and psychological discomfort to its current “heirs.”
 
The unsettling presence of Jewish ruins, resurfacing human remains, walled-in objects, collapsing cellars, and the recycled tombstones constitutes an “intrusion of the past into the present” that, decades after the war, still demands action and results in different local responses.
 
The respondent, Natalia Romik, is an artist, urban historian, and architect from Warsaw who has undertaken similar but different explorations of the Jewish heritage in small Polish towns.
 
Jun
28
Mon
Belarus Jewish heritage conference @ Minsk and online
Jun 28 – Jun 30 all-day
Belarus Jewish heritage conference @ Minsk and online

The Belarusian-Jewish Cultural Heritage Center and The Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations at the University of Southampton are organizing the first international conference on ‘The history, culture and heritage of Jews in Belarus across the ages.’

The aim of the conference is to discuss the latest findings on all aspects of the history, culture and heritage of Jews in Belarus, including the emergence of a distinctive Belarusian-Jewish identity.

NOTE: The conference will be ‘hybrid’, allowing participants and audience to attend either on site if they can go to Minsk, or remotely, through the conference platform.

The conference will bring together specialists from Eastern Europe and other parts of the world to discuss the latest findings on all aspects of the history, culture and heritage of Jews in Belarus. 

There will be panels on art, pre-revolutionary history, ethnography, heritage, Holocaust, interwar period, language and literature. The keynote speakers are Professor Mikhail Krutikov and Dr Inna Gerasimova. There will also be round-tables about heritage and national identities in contemporary Belarus.

Click here for the conference web page

 

Oct
10
Sun
Zoymen 2021 @ Online
Oct 10 all-day
Zoymen 2021 @ Online

An online conference on two Sundays about Jewish identity and cultural heritage in Belarus, organized by TheTogether Plan within the context of the European Days of Jewish Culture. The Together Plan is engaged in various Jewish communal, heritage, and identity projects in Belarus, including organising a Jewish heritage route.

It calls Belarus “the unexplored and unknown root of modern day Ashkenazi Jewry.”

The conference “will be exploring hidden history, overcoming severe challenges and taking a look at modern day solutions.”

Click here to register, buy ticket, and see program

 

Oct
17
Sun
Zoymen 2021 @ Online
Oct 17 all-day
Zoymen 2021 @ Online

An online conference on two Sundays about Jewish identity and cultural heritage in Belarus, organized by TheTogether Plan within the context of the European Days of Jewish Culture. The Together Plan is engaged in various Jewish communal, heritage, and identity projects in Belarus, including organising a Jewish heritage route.

It calls Belarus “the unexplored and unknown root of modern day Ashkenazi Jewry.”

The conference “will be exploring hidden history, overcoming severe challenges and taking a look at modern day solutions.”

Click here to register, buy ticket, and see program

 

Nov
27
Sat
Extermination – Great Synagogue Grodno @ online - zoom, and on-site
Nov 27 @ 18:00 – 20:30
Extermination - Great Synagogue Grodno @ online - zoom, and on-site | Vilnius | Vilniaus apskritis | Lithuania

European Humanities University (EHU) and the Center for Belarusian Community and Culture in Vilnius will host a premiere presentation of “Extermination” — an audiovisual installation about the Great Synagogue of Grodno, which was constructed in the 16th century and was rebuilt many times after devastating fires. 

Kseniya Shtalenkova (lecturer in the Academic Department of Humanities and Arts at EHU, Philosophy PhD candidate) is the project curator and Viktoryia Bahdanovich (fourth-year student of the BA program in Visual Design) is the project production designer and executive producer.

 The “Extermination” audiovisual installation is a monologue on the history of the place as well as an individual experience of a person in time and space.

The installation has been created as a part of the project on “Preservation and Actualization of Former Synagogues in Belarus for the Benefit of Local Communities” by Stsiapan Stureika, Professor of Humanities and Arts at EHU. Project research conducted for the work on the installation was conducted with the participation of EHU students.

The presentation will be delivered in Russian with subtitles in English. 

Register by November 26.

Click here to register on Zoom (or for in-person attendance)

The event will be also streamed online via EHU’s Facebook page.

NOTE: you can attend the event physically at the Belarusian House (Vilniaus g. 20) by pre-registration at the same link to register on Zoom

Apr
7
Thu
“Secrets of the Land” opening @ Regional Museum Chrudim, Czech Republic
Apr 7 @ 17:00 – 19:30
"Secrets of the Land" opening @ Regional Museum Chrudim, Czech Republic | Chrudim | Pardubický kraj | Czechia

Opening of an exhibition (running April 7-June 30, 2022) of objects found in the genizas in former synagogues in eastern Bohemia, with a particular focus on the synagogue in Luze.

The exhibition grows out of a geniza research project initiated by the Prague Jewish Museum in the 1990s.

 

Nov
23
Wed
Invisible synagogues – Neviditelné synagogy @ Synagogue in Krnov
Nov 23 2022 @ 17:00 – Feb 28 2023 @ 19:00
Invisible synagogues - Neviditelné synagogy @ Synagogue in Krnov | Krnov | Moravskoslezský kraj | Czechia

The latest edition of the exhibit Neviditelné Synagogy — Invisible Synagogues, photographs by Štěpán Bartoš.  The vernissage is November 23 at 17:00.

Bartoš photographs the blank spaces in the Czech Republic where destroyed synagogues once stood and adds a ghostly silhouette of the destroyed synagogue to the exhibition photos of the places where they once stood.

On the Invisible Synagogues project web site (which is in German and Czech) you can see galleries of his photos, without the added silhouette, arranged according to region. They include sites in big cities, small towns, and tiny villages; there are fields and rural spaces as well as modern buildings, crowded city streets, and even artificial lakes.

Read our November 2021 post about his Invisible Synagogues project.

 

Jan
14
Sun
Restoring Legacy: reclaiming the Brest-Litovsk Jewish cemetery @ online
Jan 14 @ 19:00 – 20:00
Restoring Legacy: reclaiming the Brest-Litovsk Jewish cemetery @ online

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

Jan
19
Fri
Sephardic Bucharest @ Romanian Institute of Culture and Humanistic Research, Venice
Jan 19 – Jan 27 all-day
Sephardic Bucharest @ Romanian Institute of Culture and Humanistic Research, Venice

A photographic exhibit highlighting the Sephardic Jewish presence in Bucharest, curated by Felicia Waldman and Anca Tudorancea.

Photos depict synagogues, Jewish communal buildings, private buildings, and shops, etc,  as well as personalities such as professionals, doctors, merchants, artisans, doctors, cultural figures, etc.

 

Jan
25
Thu
Neviditelné synagogy – Invisible Synagogues @ Brána Trojzemí, Hrádek nad Nisou
Jan 25 – Mar 31 all-day
Neviditelné synagogy - Invisible Synagogues @ Brána Trojzemí, Hrádek nad Nisou | Liberecký kraj | Czechia

The latest edition of the exhibit Neviditelné Synagogy — Invisible Synagogues, photographs by Štěpán Bartoš.  

Bartoš photographs the blank spaces in the Czech Republic where destroyed synagogues once stood and adds a ghostly silhouette of the destroyed synagogue to the exhibition photos of the places where they once stood.

On the Invisible Synagogues project web site (which is in German and Czech) you can see galleries of his photos, without the added silhouette, arranged according to region. They include sites in big cities, small towns, and tiny villages; there are fields and rural spaces as well as modern buildings, crowded city streets, and even artificial lakes.

Read our November 2021 post about his Invisible Synagogues project.

 

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