Jewish Heritage Europe

Calendar

Dec
4
Mon
History and Residents of Willesden Jewish cemetery, London @ online
Dec 4 @ 19:00 – 20:00
History and Residents of Willesden Jewish cemetery, London @ online

Barnet Libraries presents: The History and Residents of Willesden Jewish Cemetery.

The cemetery is a designated Heritage Site and celebrated its 150th anniversary in June this year.

Many of the people who are buried there were prominent in the fields of industry, commerce, science and the arts.

It is hoped that this talk will be a catalyst to people visiting the grounds and seeing the work delivered by the cemetery’s small team and dedicated volunteers.

 

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
23
Tue
“Religious Heritage and Minority Communities” @ online and Centre for Religion and Heritage of the University of Groningen
Jan 23 @ 13:15 – 18:15
“Religious Heritage and Minority  Communities” @ online and Centre for Religion and Heritage of the University of Groningen

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

 

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
 
 
Jan
27
Sat
International Holocaust Remembrance Day
Jan 27 all-day
International Holocaust Remembrance Day

January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945, is observed as an annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

There are many commemorative, educational, and other events in many countries on and around that date.

 

 

Feb
18
Sun
Open Day Merthyr Tydfil @ Theatre Soar, Merthyr Tydfil
Feb 18 @ 10:00 – 15:30
Open Day Merthyr Tydfil @ Theatre Soar, Merthyr Tydfil | Wales | United Kingdom

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.

 

Mar
14
Thu
Rashi and Troyes Memory and Place in 21st Century Europe @ Online
Mar 14 @ 18:00 – 19:30
Rashi and Troyes Memory and Place in 21st Century Europe @ Online

For 1,000 years, the teachings of the Jewish scholar and innovative commentator Rashi of Troyes have shaped our humanist, moral and legal values. There is now an initiative to have Rashi and the wider region where he was active in France recognized by the European Heritage Label.

A Public Interest Group has been constituted by the State, the City of Troyes, the Department of Aube, the Region Grand-Est and the Central Consistoire of France to prepare the candidacy for the European Heritage Label designation. The originality of this project to connect the local and regional level where the lack of material artefacts has favored artistic creation and the development of new educational resources and environmentally sustainable tourist networks, with national and international initiatives.

Delphine Yagüe, the Director, and Professor Josef Konvitz, coordinator of the scientific advisory committee for the GIP project, will describe some of the current and planned innovative activities which highlight the European dimension of the site, attracting youth, contributing to the fight against antisemitism, and connecting with the activities of other European Heritage Label sites.

Program 18.00-19:30 CET

18:00: Introduction: Dr. Susanne Urban & Tomasz Wlodarski
18:10: Rashi and Troyes: Memory and Place in 21st Century Europe:
Delphine Yagüe & Prof. Josef Konvitz
19:00: Discussion
19:25: Wrap Up by Michael Mail

Please register for the event here (link to the Google Form) –

https://forms.gle/Wt3Ykc8mDLnvzwBY9

The Zoom link will be sent just prior to the event.

Mar
17
Sun
Jewish cemetery clean up @ Jewish cemetery Přistoupim, Czech Republic
Mar 17 @ 09:00 – 12:00

Jewish cemetery clean-up, organised by the oPŘISe, z. s. NGO

Work will entail removal of ivy from gravestones and other necessary activities. Bring your own tools (sickles, scissors, machetes). Men need to wear head covering. Refreshments will be provided. 

 

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
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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