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
Commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the destruction of Jewish Rohatyn.
On March 20, 1942, the largest and deadliest of the Nazi “aktions” resulted in the final liquidation of Rohatyn’s Jewish population. 3,500-5,500 victims, half of which were children, were executed and buried in a common grave in the fields south of city center. Rohatyn Jewish Heritage invites all those who wish to remember the victims on-site at 13.00 on 20 March 2022 for prayer and a moment of silence led by Rabbi Kolesnik of Ivano-Frankivisk.
GPS: 49°24’12.7″N 24°37’39.4″E
(Photo shows longtime local activist, the later Mykhailo Vorobets, at the south mass grave in Rohatyn in 2012. Photo © RJH)
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:
A series of events starting September 1 and continuing until the end of the year will be coordinated as the B’nai B’rith Jewish Heritage in the UK Festival — organised under the international umbrella of the European Days of Jewish Culture (EDJC), whose theme this year is “Renewal.”
Click here to download a PDF calendar of events
(Click here for the “flipsnack” online catalogue of events).
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.
An exhibition of art-enhanced photographs by Dmytro Polyukhovich based on the carvings on the centuries-old matzevot in the Jewish cemetery in Sataniv (which unfortunately has suffered extensive damage in recent years by a self-appointed Haredi man claiming to restore it).
The images for the exhibition focus on specific details of the carved iconography, which combines religious tradition with folk art — floral motifs, animals (and imaginary animals), symbols, religious allegories, and more.
To create the exhibition pieces, Polyukovich manipulated his original photos of the matzevot in Adobe Photoshop, cutting away everything except for the specific detail of the carving that he wanted to highlight and then adding color.
NOTE: The exhibition will be open every Wednesday and every Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. It is also possible to organize group tours every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.
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.
A multimedia exhibition by the artist, architect and historian Natalia Romik dedicated to the creativity of Polish Jews seeking to survive the Shoah in hiding.
In Poland and Ukraine during World War II, approximately 50,000 people survived persecution by the German occupying forces in hiding. The majority of them were Jewish. They found refuge in tree hollows, closets, basements, sewers, empty graves, and other precarious locations. Natalia Romik’s exhibition “Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival” pays tribute to these fragile places of refuge and explores their physicality. The show poses basic questions about the relationship between architecture, private life, and the public sphere: it addresses the protective function of spaces and emphasizes the creativity those in hiding brought to bear in their attempt to survive.
In a research project extending over several years, Natalia Romik and an interdisciplinary team of researchers consulted oral histories to identify several hiding places, which they explored using forensic methods. The multimedia exhibition “Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival” presents the results of this research. It consists of sculptures bearing a direct connection to the sites and includes documentary films, forensic recordings, photos, documents, and objects found in the hiding places.
“Hideouts: The Architecture of Survival” is presented in cooperation with the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw and the TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Szczecin. On the occasion of the show at the Jewish Museum Frankfurt, a catalogue will be published in German and English editions by Hatje Cantz Verlag.
The exhibition was curated by Kuba Szreder and Stanisław Ruksza with the help of Aleksandra Janus (scientific collaboration). For the presentation in Frankfurt, Katja Janitschek, curator of the Judengasse Museum, was responsible for the curatorial project management. We would like to thank the Evonik Foundation for their generous support.
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