Jewish Heritage Europe

Calendar

Dec
10
Tue
Synagogues as Museums and Galleries in East‐Central Europe @ Grande Synagogue of Europe, Brussels
Dec 10 @ 18:00 – 21:00
Synagogues as Museums and Galleries in East‐Central Europe @ Grande Synagogue of Europe, Brussels | Bruxelles | Bruxelles | Belgium

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.

Mar
4
Wed
Over the river. History of Jews on the Odra River @ Zielona Gora, Poland, Museum of the Lubusz Land
Mar 4 @ 17:00 – 19:00

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.

Aug
1
Sat
Reopening POLIN museum @ POLIN Museum, Warsaw
Aug 1 all-day
Reopening POLIN museum @ POLIN Museum, Warsaw | Warszawa | Mazowieckie | Poland

The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews reopens its Core Exhibit after COVID-19 closure.

Sep
23
Wed
Exhibition opening @ Lviv Museum of History of Religion
Sep 23 @ 16:00 – 17:00
Exhibition opening @ Lviv Museum of History of Religion | L'viv | L'vivs'ka oblast | Ukraine
The exhibition will feature 22 ritual items used in synagogues or by Jewish families as well as photos from the collection of Vladimir Rumyantsev and Yaroslav Yanchak, provided by the Center for Urban History of Central and Eastern Europe from its media archive.
 
Among the exhibits are Galician Hanukkah menorahs, a Torah crown, tzedaka boxes, and a post-war velvet parochot with an embroidered inscription dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust
 
Some of the items were kept during 1945–1962 in the Jakub Glanzer Synagogue. They were later confiscated by the Soviet authorities and transferred to the Lviv Historical Museum, and from there to the Lviv Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism (Today – the Lviv Museum of the History of Religion). 
The curator of the exhibition is Maxim Martin, the head of the museum’s Judaism department.
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The exhibition will be up until the end of the year.
Feb
11
Thu
Virtual Opening of Romaniote Memories: Photos of Vincent Giordano @ Online Zoom event
Feb 11 @ 17:00 – 18:00
Virtual Opening of Romaniote Memories: Photos of Vincent Giordano @ Online Zoom event
The exhibition can be seen at this link: https://scalar.usc.edu/works/romaniote-memories/index
 
In 1999, photographer Vincent Giordano made an unplanned visit to the small Kehila Kedosha Janina (KKJ) synagogue on New York’s Lower East Side. He knew little about Judaism or synagogues, and even less about the Romaniote Jewish tradition of which KKJ, built in 1927, is the lone North American representative. In this he was not alone. Romaniotes are among the least known of Jewish communities. Beginning in 2001 and guided by members of the KKJ community, Giordano documented the synagogue and its religious art of the congregation using film, video, and audio.
 
In 2019 the Giordano family donated the archive of Vincent’s work to Queens College, where it is a major part of the Hellenic American Project and is preserved as part of the Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library’s Special Collections and Archives.
 
The exhibition is sponsored by the Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library, Hellenic American Project, and Center for Jewish Studies at Queens College, in partnership with the International Center for Jewish Monuments, an independent non-profit organization.
 
The exhibition includes more than one hundred photographs, presented in ten thematic sections, accessible here.
 
To register for the exhibition’s opening reception on Zoom, featuring a conversation with curators, distinguished guests, and friends go to:
May
19
Wed
Jewish Bialystok virtual tour @ Online event
May 19 @ 19:00 – 20:00
Jewish Bialystok virtual tour @ Online event

Take a a virtual tour of Bialystok with Tomasz Wisniewski, an expert in Jewish history of Podlasie region, who will guide viewers through the city space and history of Bialystok, a home to Jewish community from the mid-17th century. Join in to listen to the history of Jewish community of Bialystok: its role in the rapid development of the town in the 19th century, social and cultural life in early 20th century, and the fate of Jews during Soviet and Nazi occupation.

The tour is part of the regular “Zoom in” program of the Forum for Dialogue NGO.

Wisniewski has been working for more than 30 years to preserve the memory of the Jewish communities of Poland’s eastern borderland. He created the web site jewishbialystok.pl as an online museum of Jewish history in the region and he received the POLIN museum award in 2018.

He has written several books, including a guidebook to Jewish Bialystok and surroundings, and on his YouTube channel  you can find more than 2,000 films presenting Jewish history of the region. He has documented Jewish cemeteries and runs the site bagnowka.pl, which collects data on almost 40,000  tombstones, mainly Jewish ones, and also presents other heritage information.

Click here to register

 

 

Jun
12
Sat
Preserving Memory 2021 award ceremony @ Online event
Jun 12 @ 12:00 – 13:00
Preserving Memory 2021 award ceremony @ Online event

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:

 
 
 
 
Oct
7
Thu
Judaica in open-air museums conference; official opening of replica of wooden synagogue of Połaniec @ Ethnographic Museum in Sanok, Poland
Oct 7 – Oct 8 all-day
Judaica in open-air museums conference; official opening of replica of wooden synagogue of Połaniec @ Ethnographic Museum in Sanok, Poland | Sanok | Podkarpackie | Poland

The full-scale replica of the wooden synagogue of Połaniec one of the hundreds of East European wooden synagogues destroyed during WW2, will be formally opened — it has been installed at Poland’s largest open-air ethnographic museum, or skansen, the Folk Architecture Museum in Sanok, in the far southeast corner of Poland.

Click here to see our September 13 article and photos about the synagogue and replica.

The two-day opening event includes the inauguration on-site on October 7, plus an excursion to the masonry synagogue and historic Jewish cemetery in nearby Lesko.

The day-long conference takes place October 8, at another location in Sanok, the Jan Grodek State Vocational Academy —  ul. Mickiewicza 21.

Click here to see the full program

Mar
31
Thu
Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival @ Zacheta gallery Warsaw
Mar 31 @ 18:00 – 19:00
Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival @ Zacheta gallery Warsaw | Warszawa | Mazowieckie | Poland

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.

 

Jun
26
Sun
25th Preserving Memory awards @ Galicia Jewish Museum
Jun 26 @ 12:00 – 13:00
25th Preserving Memory awards @ Galicia Jewish Museum | Kraków | Małopolskie | Poland

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

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