Call for Papers: Southern Jewish Historical Society's Annual Conference

 Brenham, Texas. B'nai Abraham Synagogue (1893). Photo: Shirley Moskowitz.

Southern Synagogues

The very first talk I ever gave about synagogue architecture (at the College Art Association in Houston in 1988) was about the little B'nai Abraham synagogue in my ancestral town of Brenham, Texas.  I've always been interested in the development of synagogue architecture in the American south and west - since the history of Jews in those areas is in many ways so different from the best-known narrative of the East-coast American Jewish experience.

I've posted on this blog and elsewhere about southern synagogues on several occasions.  Here is a call for papers from the Southern Jewish Historical Society.  I'm thinking about submitting a proposal for a paper of session about southern synagogue architecture - if only because I've never been to Birmingham and there are buildings old and new I'd like to see there, including the near-100-year-old Temple Emanuel, one of the country's best surviving (domed) classical-style synagogues.  If you are working on a related topic - a single building, an architect or a building type, let me know. 

 Savannah, Georgia. Congregation Mickve Israel synagogue (1874). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2006).

Lee Shai Weissbach's excellent book the The Synagogues of Kentucky remains the best introduction to the varieties of types of styles to be found in the region and some of the social and religious circumstances leading to their construction and use. but there have been some other good local studies of specifically Jewish sites, and Jewish sites within local historical and architectural contexts.

For those wanting to know more about some southern synagogues and their communities, check out the Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Communities edited by Stuart Rockoff of the Institute of Southern Jewish life.   

 Birmingham, Alabama.  Temple Emanuel (1914). Photo: postcard.

Here is the Southern Jewish Historical Society call for papers:

Call for Papers: Southern Jewish Historical Society's Annual Conference

Since 1977, the Southern Jewish Historical Society has worked to foster scholarship about the experience of southern Jews.  With an annual conference, academic journal, and active grant and award programs, the society has helped to move southern Jewish history from the margins of the American Jewish narrative into the mainstream.  For more information about the SJHS, please go to http://www.jewishsouth.org/.

The Southern Jewish Historical Society will hold its annual conference on November 1-3, 2013, in Birmingham, Alabama.  2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the Birmingham civil rights demonstrations, and the SJHS meeting will be part of the city's commemoration of the events.  Although the history of Jews and the Civil Rights Movement will be of particular interest, we invite the submission of paper proposals that deal with all dimensions of southern Jewish history.   Submission of panel proposals will also be considered.

Paper proposals are due by March 15, 2013.  Abstracts should not exceed more than one page.  Submissions should include an abstract, a CV, and contact information.  For panel proposals, please include abstracts of each paper, CVs for presenters and panel organizer, and contact information for all participants.

Please submit your proposal to Dan Puckett at dpuckett45442@troy.edu.

For additional information please contact:

Dr. Dan Puckett at (334) 241-5478 or Dr. Stuart Rockoff at (601) 362-6357
(Rockoff@isjl.org)

Belgium: New Holocaust and Human Rights Museum Opens at Mechelen

 Mechelen, Belgium. Kazerne Dossin. New Museum and Documentation Center.  Photos: Kazerne Dossin website.

Mechelen, Belgium. Kazerne Dossin. New Museum and Documentation Center, new memorial set inside the old barracks. Photos: Kazerne Dossin website.

Mechelen, Belgium. Kazerne Dossin in 2005 Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2005)

Belgium:  New Holocaust and Human Rights Museum Opens at Mechelen
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) King Albert II of Belgium opened a new Holocaust and Human Rights Center in Mechelen, Belgium in early December, 2012.  The new white cube-like building (actually its a pentagon) is situated adjacent to the18th-century Kazerne Dossin (barracks) that served as a last-stop transit camp for Belgian Jews begin shipped to their deaths at Auschwitz.  

According to the Museum website: 

"The old Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance is now a memorial, a place of reflection for victims and their relatives, while a brand-new building – a white monolith - opposite the old barracks houses the permanent historical exhibition. The new building occupies the site of the former detention building, opposite the barracks, emphatically marking the spot where the events of the Second World War unfolded....The museum is pentagon-shaped with large expanses of glass on one side and bricked-up windows on the other. On top of the building is a terrace which looks out over the old barracks. 

The infrastructure is designed to accommodate school and other groups as well as individual visitors. With four floors of galleries, a spacious auditorium, cafeteria and two educational areas, the museum has everything it takes to put itself on the map nationally and internationally."

You can see images of the construction and completion of the new center here.

The Mechelen transit camp site was strategically sited at a major rail junction halfway between Brussels and Antwerp, the major Jewish population centers of the country.  In the 1980s part of the complex was renovated for housing,  but part became the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance, which opened in 1995 due to the initiative of Belgium's Jewish community.  In 2001, the government began an expansion of the institution with the construction of a new complex opposite the old barracks.  This new facility houses an expanded museum, documentation center and memorial.

Mechelen, Belgium. Kazerne Dossin commemorative exhibit in 2005. This has now been changed.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2005)

The new building was designed by Flemish architect bOb Van Reeth and financed by the Flemish government. The 25,852 bricks used in the construction are meant to signify the number of Jews and Roma sent to Auschwitz from the barracks, located just a few meters away.
Read more abut the new center here.

In related news, last summer Antwerp Mayor Patrick Janssens announced plans for a commemorative  monument to the city's Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust.

Mechelen was the site of several incidents of Jewish resistant and prisoner escapes.  According to Wikipedia, based on the research of Maxime Steinberg: "The Belgian Jewish underground, assisted by the Belgian resistance, derailed several trains carrying Jews from the camp to Auschwitz during 1942–1943. Though most of these people were soon put on the next transports, about 500 Jewish prisoners did manage to escape. At an attempted escape on 19 April 1943, resistance fighters stopped the 20th transport near the train station of Boortmeerbeek, 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) south-east of Mechelen. 231 prisoners managed to flee although 90 were eventually recaptured and 26 were shot by train escort guards.  you can read a more detailed history fo the camp by Lawrence Schram here:

Laurence Schram,The Transit Camp for Jews in Mechelen: The Antechamber of Death, Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence

By: Philippe Siuberski BRUSSELS (AFP).- Belgium's newly-opened Holocaust and human rights museum stands symbolically on the site of a barracks commandeered by the Nazis as a wartime transit centre for Jews and Gypsies being sent to the death camps. The new "Kazerne Dossin" in the Flemish town of Mechelen, comprising a museum, memorial and documentation centre, is located at the site of an 18th century barracks that officials dub "a silent witness to the greatest war crime, in the form of genocide, in Belgium." The new World War II remembrance complex some 30 kilometres from Brussels was inaugurated by Belgian King Albert II and opened to the public last month. Like the Drancy camp outside Paris where Jews were rounded up and sent to death camps, the Dossin barracks -- directly linked to the Belgian rail network -- was turned into a last-stop transit centre for the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau camp run by the Nazis between 1942 and 1944. More than 25,500 Jews and 350 Gypsies from both Belgium and northern France were sent there after their arrest, often with the help of local police. There were more than 70,000 Jews in Belgium before the Second World War broke out, notably 18,000 in the nearby port city of Antwerp. After two or three months at Dossin, deportees were herded into trains for the Third Reich's death camps. Only five percent of the Jews and Gypsies who left Mechelen in 28 convoys ever returned. Last September, Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo presented the country's apologies for crimes committed by people who had worked hand-in-hand with Nazis to deport Jews. "This new museum takes a more profound look at the history of the persecution of the Jews in Flanders and Belgium, based on new historic sources of information and insights," said Kris Peeters, who heads the Dutch-speaking government of Flanders. "It also provides a link between the concepts of holocaust and human rights." In 1995, members of the Jewish community opened a small museum in a part of the barracks but much of the building had already been turned into flats and sold. The new complex, built with the help of a 25-million-euro investment by the government of Flanders, adds a state-of-the-art cube-like museum designed by celebrated Flemish architect Bob Van Reeth. The top fourth floor, destined to house temporary exhibitions, is open to the light of day but the other three storeys smack of a mausoleum. Rectangular shapes in the white facade symbolise bricked-up windows while the heavy sliding steel door recalls those on the freight trains used to carry the victims to their death. Van Reeth said the total volume was equivalent to that of the freight cars used in the 28 convoys to the death camp; the number of bricks used being the same as the number of people deported. The three floors touch on three themes -- intolerance, fear and death. The museum expects to see 100,000 visitors a year. © 1994-2012 Agence France-Presse

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=60107#.UPVPDmePxJy[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org

By: Philippe Siuberski BRUSSELS (AFP).- Belgium's newly-opened Holocaust and human rights museum stands symbolically on the site of a barracks commandeered by the Nazis as a wartime transit centre for Jews and Gypsies being sent to the death camps. The new "Kazerne Dossin" in the Flemish town of Mechelen, comprising a museum, memorial and documentation centre, is located at the site of an 18th century barracks that officials dub "a silent witness to the greatest war crime, in the form of genocide, in Belgium." The new World War II remembrance complex some 30 kilometres from Brussels was inaugurated by Belgian King Albert II and opened to the public last month. Like the Drancy camp outside Paris where Jews were rounded up and sent to death camps, the Dossin barracks -- directly linked to the Belgian rail network -- was turned into a last-stop transit centre for the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau camp run by the Nazis between 1942 and 1944. More than 25,500 Jews and 350 Gypsies from both Belgium and northern France were sent there after their arrest, often with the help of local police. There were more than 70,000 Jews in Belgium before the Second World War broke out, notably 18,000 in the nearby port city of Antwerp. After two or three months at Dossin, deportees were herded into trains for the Third Reich's death camps. Only five percent of the Jews and Gypsies who left Mechelen in 28 convoys ever returned. Last September, Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo presented the country's apologies for crimes committed by people who had worked hand-in-hand with Nazis to deport Jews. "This new museum takes a more profound look at the history of the persecution of the Jews in Flanders and Belgium, based on new historic sources of information and insights," said Kris Peeters, who heads the Dutch-speaking government of Flanders. "It also provides a link between the concepts of holocaust and human rights." In 1995, members of the Jewish community opened a small museum in a part of the barracks but much of the building had already been turned into flats and sold. The new complex, built with the help of a 25-million-euro investment by the government of Flanders, adds a state-of-the-art cube-like museum designed by celebrated Flemish architect Bob Van Reeth. The top fourth floor, destined to house temporary exhibitions, is open to the light of day but the other three storeys smack of a mausoleum. Rectangular shapes in the white facade symbolise bricked-up windows while the heavy sliding steel door recalls those on the freight trains used to carry the victims to their death. Van Reeth said the total volume was equivalent to that of the freight cars used in the 28 convoys to the death camp; the number of bricks used being the same as the number of people deported. The three floors touch on three themes -- intolerance, fear and death. The museum expects to see 100,000 visitors a year. © 1994-2012 Agence France-Presse

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=60107#.UPVPDmePxJy[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org

By: Philippe Siuberski BRUSSELS (AFP).- Belgium's newly-opened Holocaust and human rights museum stands symbolically on the site of a barracks commandeered by the Nazis as a wartime transit centre for Jews and Gypsies being sent to the death camps. The new "Kazerne Dossin" in the Flemish town of Mechelen, comprising a museum, memorial and documentation centre, is located at the site of an 18th century barracks that officials dub "a silent witness to the greatest war crime, in the form of genocide, in Belgium." The new World War II remembrance complex some 30 kilometres from Brussels was inaugurated by Belgian King Albert II and opened to the public last month. Like the Drancy camp outside Paris where Jews were rounded up and sent to death camps, the Dossin barracks -- directly linked to the Belgian rail network -- was turned into a last-stop transit centre for the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau camp run by the Nazis between 1942 and 1944. More than 25,500 Jews and 350 Gypsies from both Belgium and northern France were sent there after their arrest, often with the help of local police. There were more than 70,000 Jews in Belgium before the Second World War broke out, notably 18,000 in the nearby port city of Antwerp. After two or three months at Dossin, deportees were herded into trains for the Third Reich's death camps. Only five percent of the Jews and Gypsies who left Mechelen in 28 convoys ever returned. Last September, Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo presented the country's apologies for crimes committed by people who had worked hand-in-hand with Nazis to deport Jews. "This new museum takes a more profound look at the history of the persecution of the Jews in Flanders and Belgium, based on new historic sources of information and insights," said Kris Peeters, who heads the Dutch-speaking government of Flanders. "It also provides a link between the concepts of holocaust and human rights." In 1995, members of the Jewish community opened a small museum in a part of the barracks but much of the building had already been turned into flats and sold. The new complex, built with the help of a 25-million-euro investment by the government of Flanders, adds a state-of-the-art cube-like museum designed by celebrated Flemish architect Bob Van Reeth. The top fourth floor, destined to house temporary exhibitions, is open to the light of day but the other three storeys smack of a mausoleum. Rectangular shapes in the white facade symbolise bricked-up windows while the heavy sliding steel door recalls those on the freight trains used to carry the victims to their death. Van Reeth said the total volume was equivalent to that of the freight cars used in the 28 convoys to the death camp; the number of bricks used being the same as the number of people deported. The three floors touch on three themes -- intolerance, fear and death. The museum expects to see 100,000 visitors a year. © 1994-2012 Agence France-Presse

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=60107#.UPVPDmePxJy[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org

Czech Republic: Nationwide Jewish Museum Links Historic Sites Across Country

Jicin, Czech Republic.  Restored Synagogue.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2009.

In the past I've written about the exceptional work being done in the Czech Republic to restore and present notable Jewish historic and architectural sites.  Since at least 2009 plans have been laid to create a linked network of sites with exhibitions and tourist infra-structure to help draw visitors out of Prague and to explore the fascinating, beautiful and still-oft preserved place of Jewish history throughout the country. As Ruth E. Gruber reports in an JTA article, the plan for what is essentially a nation-wide Jewish museum, is now moving ahead with significant support from the EU.

New Czech Jewish museum to spread exhibits across 10 sites nationwide

By Ruth Ellen Gruber · December 11, 2012

PRAGUE (JTA) -- A large Jewish museum set to open in the Czech Republic in October will be a far cry from any Jewish museum in Europe.

Instead of one building or a complex of exhibition halls in one city, it will be a nationwide museum comprising 10 linked thematic exhibitions in 10 restored synagogue buildings located in as many different towns and cities.

Called 10 Stars, the project is being coordinated by the Czech Federation of Jewish Communities, which owns the buildings, with the bulk of the funding coming from a $14 million grant from the European Union. About 15 percent of the financing is being provided by the Czech Culture Ministry.

“It’s actually one museum scattered around the country,” said Tomas Kraus, the executive director of the federation.

“The exhibition in each site will be linked to one certain phenomenon in Jewish history, culture, religion, traditions,” he said. “The idea is that if you visit one of the sites, even by chance, you will realize that there are nine other parts of the exhibition, so you will want to visit them, too.”

Read the full article here

USA: Time to Designate the Biaystoker Home a New York City Landmark

New York, NY. The Bialystoker Home, main entrance. Photo: Samuel Gruber (2005)

USA: Time to Designate the Biaystoker Home a New York City Landmark 
 by Samuel D. Gruber

One of the most distinctive buildings on the Lower East Side - Jewish or otherwise - is the Bialystoker Home at 228 East Broadway, known officially in its last years as the Bialystoker Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation, located nor far from another distinctive landmark and secular tower - the former Forward Building at Straus Square, now re-purposed as condominium apartments. 

Opened on June 21, 1931, the Bialystoker carries the residual optimism found in so much of New York's architecture of the late 1920s, planned before the November 1929 stock market crash and the subsequent Great Depression.  At the same time, the very purpose of the home was to provide care for elderly, mostly immigrant Jews, who could not manage to care of themselves.  This growing population was already recognized as needy and under-serviced during the period of post-World War I prosperity. 

 

New York, NY. The Bialystoker Home. Harry Hurwit, arch., 1930-31.  Photo: Samuel Gruber (2005)  

The 10-story Bialystoker tower stands out architecturally as an exemplar of the embrace of the modern and Art Deco styles by New York's Jews (think of the office skyscrapers of Ely Jacques Kahn and Irwin Chanin) but also as an important and successful social experiment.  The Bialystoker is the physical manifestation of the shift in the charitable impulses of the late 19th-century landsmanshaft groups to more modern community-wide social services.  For the first time, place-based immigrant groups (led by the many Bialystoker organizations) pooled their resources to provide a necessary charitable service available to all needy Jews.  This style of care, already known in uptown Jewish hospitals such as Sinai and Montefiore, was new on the Lower East Side.  And while those earlier institutions had been founded by New York's German-speaking Jewish population, the success of the Bialystoker Home was due entirely to "Polish" Jews.

When the Bialystoker Home opened The New York Times reported that “Twenty-five years to the day after many of their number had fled from a pogrom in Bialystok, Poland, more than 5,000 Jews crowded East Broadway between Clinton and Montgomery Streets…and witnessed the opening and dedication of the $500,000 Bialystoker Home for the Aged.”   President Franklin Roosevelt and other  officials sent congratulatory telegrams.  Representative Samuel Dickstein  saw in the home evidence that the Jews had always “taken care of their own people, without calling upon the government to find a place for the orphans and the aged.”

The home provided for 250 residents and included an auditorium, dormitories, two synagogues, sun parlors and hospital wards. It later added assisted living options for elderly so that they could continue to socialize as part of the neighborhood’s fabric.

Read more about the history of the Bialystoker home here.

The building was designed by Harry Hurwit (1888-1963), a Jewish architect who was also a local boy; he grew up on the Lower East Side.  According to the Friends of the Bialystoker Home, Hurwit was veteran of several battles of World War I and was able to attend Cooper Union after the war.  After graduation, he established his own firm where designed he residential, institutional and commercial buildings. Hurwit is best known for the Bialystoker Home, one of his last fully realized buildings.  After the onset of the Great Depression, he made a living with small jobs and building alterations.  Harry Hurwit remained involved with the Lower East Side community throughout his life.  He was a member of the Educational Alliance, the Grand Street Boys Association and the Veterans of Foreign Wars.  Several of his descendants have joined the campaign to save the Bialystoker Center and Home.

Hurwit managed to create a very multi-functional building that is also one of the more striking Art Deco buildings in the city, seemingly both intimate and tall at the same time.  This is due in part to the building's narrow facade, and also to the fact that it's ten stories - while puny compared to Wall Street or midtown towers - was quite high on the Lower East Side in 1931.  Perhaps a timeless quality is intended by the inclusion of roundels in which symbols in relief of the Twelve Tribes of Israel surround the main entrance portal, or the message may be more explicitly Zionist.  And perhaps just as the charitable program of the Home competed with uptown precursors, the builders of the Home were also inspired by the inclusion of sign of the Twelve Tribes  on the great bronze doors of Uptown's newest marvel - the grand Temple Emanuel on Fifth Avenue, completed in January 1930.  There, we find the symbols of the tribes - with very similar depictions - suggesting a common source for both representations. 

 New York, NY. The Bialystoker Home. Harry Hurwit, arch., 1930-31.  Photo: Samuel Gruber (2005) 

The Symbols of the Twelve Tribes are described in detail in an article by Richard McBee “The Twelve Tribes At The Bialystoker Home” The Jewish Press (3/15/2012), who was asssisted by the research of Elissa Sampson.  McBee writes:

The images are ensconced in roundels that approximate a Hebraic formulation (right to left) of Jacob’s “blessings” found at the end of Genesis. They start on the right with the first born, Reuben, travel up, cross the transept and down the left side to the final child, Benjamin

The exact order and most of the images actually follows the Midrash Rabbah on Numbers 2:2 that expands on the arrangement of the tribes around the Tent of Meeting in the wilderness; “The Children of Israel shall encamp, each man by his banner according to the insignias of their fathers’ household.” This midrash codifies the information from Jacob’s blessings (Genesis 49) and Moses’ blessings (Deuteronomy 33) into a blueprint for the color and image for each tribe’s flag or symbol.

At the base of each side panel there are stylized representations of the Temple Menorah superimposed over a Star of David/pyramid design anchored by schematic sunrises. These images link this building on East Broadway with both the ancient Temple and the growing Zionist movement in Palestine. Reuben’s mandrakes, a gift of fertility for both his mother and Rachel, effectively sidesteps Jacob’s stinging castigation. Simon is represented by a massive city gate, alluding to the city of Shechem, while Levi gets off scot-free with a depiction of the High Priest’s breastplate, the Choshen HaMishpat that contained the Urim and Tumin. The right side panel is then completed with the Lion of Judah confirming Jacob’s blessing of kingship to his fourth born son.

  New York, NY. The Bialystoker Home. Harry Hurwit, arch., 1930-31.  Photo: Samuel Gruber (2005)

The Bialystoker Home is already listed on the the National Register of Historic Places, but the honorific offers no real protection to the structure, though the designation will allow a future developer the advantage of historic preservation tax credits for any project that maintains the character of the building.   Local residents - many of whom have labored for years to protect and preserve some of the historic character of the Lower East Side, have been especially concerned  since the closing of the Bialystoker Home in 2011 about its  possible sale to a tear-down developer who would replace it with a luxury condo.  The Friends of the Bialystoker Home was formed and has been active in promoting the preservation of this historic building, including lining up endorsement for Landmark designation. 

After a long wait, The Landmarks Preservation Commission last week calendared the Bialystoker Home and the New York Public Library, Seward Park Branch, the 1909 building that like the Bialystoker home has long been central to the identity of the neighborhood.  They are the last remaining historic buildings on the north side of East Broadway.  Public hearings on these two buildings have not yet been scheduled, but now is the time for those who wish to see these building preserved to weigh in.

Friends of the Bialystoker Home urges supporters of the building's landmark designation to write letter to:

Hon. Robert B. Tierney, Chair,

NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.

1 Centre St. 9th floor

New York, N.Y. 10007  or rtierney@lpc.nyc.gov

Please cc the organization at:  friendsoftheles@gmail.com

New York, NY. The Bialystoker Home. Harry Hurwit, arch., 1930-31.  Photo: Samuel Gruber (2005)

In related news, this month the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission approved plans for the restoration of the Jarmulowsky Bank, the third "Jewish tower" in the neighborhood.  The plans, which include rooftop modifications but are mostly aimed at returning the structure to its original 1912 glory.  The former Jarmulowsky Bank building will become a boutique hotel.   A successful effort to protect the building was undertaken in 2009.