Jewish Country Houses and the Holocaust In History and Memory
This conference will investigate the fate in the Holocaust of Jewish country houses and the people who inhabited them. It will explore memory cultures that emerged afterwards and the Cold War context that shaped them. The conference will address and support curatorial, artistic, and narrative practices telling the difficult stories of genocide linked to these properties. As it does so, it will bring together academic historians, heritage professionals, and artists over three days at the Methodological Centre of Modern Architecture at the Villa Stiassni in Brno, Czech Republic. The built heritage of the Villa Stiassni, visits to the nearby villas Tugendhat and Löw-Beer, and an exploration of the experiences and memories of the Czech Jewish industrialist families who inhabited and fled from them will be an integral part of the conference.
The annual Day of Jewish Monuments in the Czech Republic, sponsored by the Prague Jewish Community, the Federation of Jewish Communities and others.
Click to see the preliminary program
The second edition of Štetl Fest centers on the theme of trains.
Trains served as a means of transport for Jewish emigres as well as connection among families and businesses. They also served as escape for Jewish and other refugees seeking freedom from the gradually occupied territories under Nazis control. But tragically, the infamous death trains transported thousands of Jews to death camps and concentration camps. However, trains also carried survivors home and to this day continue to aid those fleeing the ongoing war in Ukraine.
As part of the festival, a memorial dedicated to the deported Jews will be unveiled at Platform 5 of the Brno Main Train Station.
There will also be concerts, talks, and guided tours of the Brno Jewish cemetery and Jewish architectural heritage (some tours in English).
The ŠTETL FEST festival is held under the auspices of the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, the Ambassador of the State of Israel, the Minister of Culture of the Czech Republic, the Mayor of the Statutory City of Brno, the President of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic, the Governor of the South Moravian Region and the Rector of Masaryk University.
Click here to see the full program,
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
The latest edition of the exhibit Neviditelné Synagogy — Invisible Synagogues, photographs by Štěpán Bartoš.
Bartoš photographs the blank spaces in the Czech Republic where destroyed synagogues once stood and adds a ghostly silhouette of the destroyed synagogue to the exhibition photos of the places where they once stood.
On the Invisible Synagogues project web site (which is in German and Czech) you can see galleries of his photos, without the added silhouette, arranged according to region. They include sites in big cities, small towns, and tiny villages; there are fields and rural spaces as well as modern buildings, crowded city streets, and even artificial lakes.
Read our November 2021 post about his Invisible Synagogues project.
The new Dutch National Holocaust Museum will be officially opened March 10 by King Willem-Alexander at a ceremony attended by the prime minister and other VIPs. The king will also give a speech at a gathering in the nearby Portuguese Synagogue.
The museum then opens to the public on March 11, from 10 am-5 pm (almost) daily.
The museum tells the story of the Nazi persecution and murder of the Jews of the Netherlands.
This is the first and only museum to relate the history of the persecution of the Jews of the entire Netherlands. Including the day-to-day life of Jews on the eve of the Second World War, the liberation as Jews experienced it, and how the Holocaust has been treated in our national culture of remembrance: all this is examined in the museum.
The Museum is part of the Jewish Cultural Quarter in Amsterdam. Germany and Austria have contributed financially to the establishment of the museum.
(Photo: © Thijs Wolzak/National Holocaust Museum)
The new Dutch National Holocaust Museum will be officially opened March 10 by King Willem-Alexander at a ceremony attended by the prime minister and other VIPs. The king will also give a speech at a gathering in the nearby Portuguese Synagogue.
The museum then opens to the public on March 11, from 10 am-5 pm (almost) daily.
The museum tells the story of the Nazi persecution and murder of the Jews of the Netherlands.
This is the first and only museum to relate the history of the persecution of the Jews of the entire Netherlands. Including the day-to-day life of Jews on the eve of the Second World War, the liberation as Jews experienced it, and how the Holocaust has been treated in our national culture of remembrance: all this is examined in the museum.
The Museum is part of the Jewish Cultural Quarter in Amsterdam. Germany and Austria have contributed financially to the establishment of the museum.
(Photo: © Thijs Wolzak/National Holocaust Museum)
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.
After many decades, the synagogue and rabbinical house in Žatec will be ceremonially opened. Both monuments have undergone complete reconstruction in recent years and will now serve as a museum and cultural space.
The celebrations will include performances by the Žatec Occasional Choir and the Camerata children’s choir at the ZUŠ in Žatec.
Long empty and in deteriorating condition, the synagogue and rabbi’s house were bought in 2013 by Daniel Černý, who from 2019 oversaw a full-scale renovation of the buildings that was completed in 2022. Most of the €2 million costs of the project were covered with grants from the state and the EU.
The rescue and restoration of the synagogue won the Patrimonium pro futuro Award in the Monument Protection category.
NOTE: The program on March 22 will begin at 5 p.m.
After many decades, the synagogue and rabbinical house in Žatec will be ceremonially opened. Both monuments have undergone complete reconstruction in recent years and will now serve as a museum and cultural space.
The celebrations will include performances by the Žatec Occasional Choir and the Camerata children’s choir at the ZUŠ in Žatec.
Long empty and in deteriorating condition, the synagogue and rabbi’s house were bought in 2013 by Daniel Černý, who from 2019 oversaw a full-scale renovation of the buildings that was completed in 2022. Most of the €2 million costs of the project were covered with grants from the state and the EU.
The rescue and restoration of the synagogue won the Patrimonium pro futuro Award in the Monument Protection category.
NOTE: The program on March 22 will begin at 5 p.m.
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