On December 11-12, the Liberation Route Europe Foundation is organizing a memory project conference titled “When Memory Meets Dialogue – Role of Remembrance Sites and Contemporary Challenges” in Krakow, Poland. This event, in partnership with Oscar Schindler’s Enamel Factory, a branch of the Museum of Krakow, is part of the EU-funded European Days of Jewish Culture (EDJC) 2023, coordinated by the AEPJ.
The conference agenda encompasses sessions focusing on Jewish and WWII heritage. Discussions will revolve around memory transmission and the contemporary significance of remembrance sites. The primary goal is to offer a meaningful platform for idea exchange, nurture cross-cultural understanding, and stimulate international discourse on historical memory and contemporary challenges. As part of the programme, participants can also explore guided tours and historical city walks in Krakow.
“Burning,” an exhibition of paper cuts by Monika Krajewska, is now being shown in Radom, following an exhibit at the POLIN museum in Warsaw. We were privileged to host an online exhibition of some of her works in 2020.
The exhibit consists of 31 works in which the artist, using traditional Jewish paper-cutting technique, refers to objects related to the synagogue, painstakingly recreating the symbolism and ornamentation of Jewish art from East-Central Europe—stylised floral decoration, symbolic representations of animals, a repertoire of traditional sacred Jewish symbols (a menorah, Torah and the Tablets of Law, the Temple) and calligraphic quotations from religious texts and prayers.
In order to introduce reflection on loss and destruction, Krajewska subjects her painstaking work to destruction: she tears apart sections of the works after cutting them out and burns the ends of the sheets. She uses tinted paper as a background for the cut-outs, incorporating the motif of fire, ashes and ruins. And she incorporates quotations from religious texts or classics of modern Jewish literature, in which there are references to flames and destruction, as well as to the hope of salvation.
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
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.
The meeting will be conducted in English with simultaneous interpretation to Polish. 
PROGRAM 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
Lecture by Catherine Trautmann, president of the Maison du Judaïsme Rhénan association, will discuss how three associations — the Society for the Study of Judaism in Alsace-Lorraine, Les Routes du Judaïsme Rhénan and the Maison du Judaïsme Rhénan — have created a new Rhineland Judaism Center.
They hope to pool their resources within the framework of joint projects.
This conference is an opportunity to publicly present this dynamic, inspired by the example of the German ShUM cities (Mainz, Worms and Speyer) and Erfurt, whose Jewish heritage from the Middle Ages has been included on the UNESCO world heritage roster.
Under discussion will be the responsibility of Alsace, which has the largest concentration of Jewish heritage sites in France, for the protection, enhancement and access to this heritage.
Click here to find a link to register
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.
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.
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).
An exhibition about Jewish cemeteries, prepared by the Galicia Jewish Museum.
In many places throughout Poland, Jewish cemeteries or what remains of them are the only visible sign of the centuries-long presence of Jewish communities in a given area. The exhibition “Houses of Eternity” is a reflection on what Jewish cemeteries mean to us today and an attempt to find an answer to the question of what we can learn from them. Its aim is to introduce the topic of Jewish cemeteries to the widest possible audience, help understand how important an element of cultural heritage the preserved Jewish cemeteries are and answer a number of questions related to cemeteries in the context of Jewish history and tradition.
The opening is at 1 p.m., April 2
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