Calendar

The opening of a photo exhibition by Rudolf Klein that presents a brief survey of synagogues converted into museums and galleries in Hungary, Austria, Bosnia‐Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia. The exhibit runs until January 16, 2020.

The opening includes talks (in English) by Klein, Polish researcher Natalia Romik,  and Professor Thomas Gergely.

Prior registration is required.  Click here

The event is organized in collaboration with the Great Synagogue of Europe, the Balassi Institute, the Polish Institute and the Austrian Cultural Forum.

Opening of the Polish-German exhibition  “Over the river. History of Jews on the Odra River,” co-organized by the Museum of the Lubusz Land and the German Cultural Forum of Central and Eastern Europe in Potsdam.

The exhibition is devoted to selected aspects of Jewish history on both sides of the Oder River — a borderland area that changed nationality for centuries, and which was a meeting place for the culture of German Jews and the culture of Polish Jews.

From the organizers:

In the nineteenth century, a growing wave of nationalism and anti-Semitism began to threaten the cultural diversity [of the region] and eventually it was destroyed by Nazism. After World War II, the border between Poland and Germany was marked on the Oder and Nysa Łużycka. After the expulsion and displacement of the German population, these lands became a new homeland for Poles. For a short time it seemed that Polish Jews survived the Holocaust survivors in Lower Silesia and Pomerania. Initially, tens of thousands of them settled here, but most of them left the area by the end of the 1960s. Over time, the thousand-year absence of Jews on the Oder fell into oblivion, and its traces blurred or were destroyed. The exhibition tries to save from oblivion and recall these traces.

The exhibition will continue until April 26, 2020.

Webinar presentation on Polish-Jewish genealogy and protecting Jewish cemeteries, hosted by JewishGen.org. Find info and sign up at https://www.jewishgen.org/live

Ten non-Jewish Poles who preserve, protect, and maintain Jewish cultural heritage in Poland will be honored at the 24th edition of the Preserving Memory awards, honors that were established by Michael Traison in 1998.

The ceremony will take place at the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow but will also be live streamed via Zoom and Facebook.

Register for the Zoom feed at the following link:

An international conference to officially launch the massive website and digital database of Jewish cemeteries in Turkey, A World Beyond: Jewish Cemeteries in Turkey 1583-1990.  

The database and web site are a project of the The Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center of Tel Aviv University. We wrote about it when it first went online last year as a beta version — though the site still says it’s in beta, the kinks that some users experienced appear to have been worked out, and we find it easy to search and use. 

Dedicated to the memory of  the oriental studies scholar Bernard Lewis, who died in 2018, the database is the culmination of decades of research by Prof. Minna Rozen (and others) and comprises digital images and detailed textual content of more than 61,000 Jewish gravestones from a variety of communities in Turkey from 1583 until 1990. Rozen’s onsite documentation of the cemeteries was carried out in 1988-1990. The material was digitized in the 1990s but until the web site was uploaded, it had not been publicly accessible.

Opening of the exhibition Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival — showcasing the work of the architect, artist, and researcher Natalia Romik about the places where Jews hid during the Holocaust.

The exhibition will run until July 17, Tuesday-Sunday, 12-8 pm.

The 25th edition of the “Preserving Memory” awards honoring non-Jewish Poles who care for Jewish heritage in Poland.