Poland: Plaque Installed at Site of Destroyed Synagogue in Barcin

Poland: Plaque Installed at Site of Destroyed Synagogue in Barcin

On December 18, 2008, a memorial plaque commemorating the site of the destroyed synagogue was unveiled on a building located at 4 Stycznia St. in Barcin (kujawsko-pomorskie province). The ceremony was organized by the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland. The simple text on the plaque reads "Synagoga w latach 1837 -1939," and in Hebrew "Beth Kenesset."

Click here for photos of the plaque and ceremony.

Last year (November 2007), a memorial tablet commemorating the local Jewish community was unveiled at the Jewish cemetery in Barcin. The ceremony was co-organized by the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland.

It is always an important step when the site of a synagogue or cemetery is commemorated, and more systematic effort still needs to be done in Poland and elsewhere. As is well known, my own preference is also for signage that is both commemorative and didactic. It is mistake to assume that every one knows that fate of a synagogue and community just be view seeing the date 1939. Some narrative text should be included, as well as a picture of the destroyed site when possible. New signage materials now make this fairly easy.

Germany/USA: Susan Hiller’s J Street Project On View at New York’s The Jewish Museum

Germany/USA: Susan Hiller’s J Street Project On View at New York’s The Jewish Museum
By Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) New York’s Jewish Museum marked the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht with the opening of Susan Hiller’s “J Street Project,” a photo documentary project of over 300 German streets that recall a former Jewish presence through their names – Judengasse, Judenallee, and other appellation with the prefix Juden. “The Jews are gone,” Susan Hiller has said, “but the street names remain as ghosts of the past, haunting the present.”

To read about the J Street Project click here.

Hiller creates a mosaic of a lost Jewish Germany – an alternative universe to that which most Germans (and others) know. This is a “Memory Project,” – in a similar vein to the Stolperstein Projectof which I have previously written. But “J Street” is but not specifically about the Holocaust, since it refocuses attention to the Jewish presence in Germany not just in modern times, but for millennia (recent archaeological excavations in Cologne, Speyer, Regensburg and elsewhere make this same point in a very different way).

Academics have been pursuing the long history of Jews in Germany for more than a century, since the birth of Wissenschaft des Judentums in the 19th century. A recent public display of this research tradition was the exhibition and conference held in Speyer in 2002 (See the collection of papers, The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages (Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries): Proceedings of the International Symposium held at Speyer, 20-25 October 2002, ISBN 9782503516974, many of which deal with medieval Jewish streets and quarters in Germany and elsewhere). Hiller’s work is an art project, but in its expansiveness and inclusiveness it points the way to long-term research plan for archivists and archaeologists. So much more can be discovered and uncovered about the history of Jews in German lands. Hiller or some imitator could do a similar project in most countries in Europe – though few are as obvious as Germany in recalling Jews in their current street names.

Hundreds of towns in Europe once had Jewish populations. References to these Jews, as well as synagogues, can be found in historic toponyms. In Southern Italy, for example, from where Jews were expelled by the late 15th century, and particularly in rural areas, such has those in Calabria documented by Sonia Vivacqua and others. we still find Monte Giudei, Casale Giudeo, Acqua Judia, Judio Sottano and Judio Suprano, and other designations which are remembered long after the passing of the Jews. Sources tell, for example, of a vicus Judeorum in Naples that may refer to both a specific place and particular legal jurisdiction over it. Similar patterns can be described for England, France, and Spain.

Project Yesod, an ambitious but still largely unrealized project to advise local archaeologists on issues pertaining to “Jewish” archaeology, could make it a priority to list all these toponyms throughout Europe and to begin to use the methods of geographical and archaeological regional survey to better map and describe them, and to alert local authorities – the ones that allow building demolitions and excavations for sewer lines – of their presence.

We can learn from “J Street,” too. Signs are important for remembering the past – even if only the alert – like Susan Hiller – take the time to look. Collectively, we need to better define (historically) Jewish Space in Europe (and elsewhere). The first step is to identify that space, and like a biologist or botanist with a new or variant species – name it. Then we can decide – individually or collectively – if, when and how it can be (culturally) reclaimed.

Jewish Heritage Signage: Lviv and Krakow, A Tale of Two Cities

Jewish Heritage Signage: Lviv and Krakow, a Tale of Two Cities
by Samuel D. Gruber

Jewish Heritage Route sign in Kazimierz, Krakow (Poland)

In my presentation last week in Lviv,Ukraine, at the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe, I addressed the practical and theoretical questions of "Can Lviv Be Developed as a Jewish Heritage Center?" While part of the presentation and paper dealt with historical, political, and economic questions, a good deal of what I said was about simple practical solutions. I have been traveling to Lviv for almost a decade and in that time I have seen no significant positive change in the identification and reclamation of Jewish space, with the exception of the marking of the Kleparov Train station, from where Jews were deported.


Inscribed commemorative plaque at the Kleparov Train Station, Lviv

There has been talk and there have been legal actions, but a visitor to the city today receives as little information about the Jewish past as he/she would have ten years ago, or even under Communism. There were many talks during and after the conference that suggest there might be changes, and I have and others have agreed to be part of an advisory committee to move these suggestion forward. But for now, the visitor is left very much at sea when searching for the location and history of Jewish heritage sites. To my knowledge, the only signs or plaques about Jewish heritage in Lviv are a few memorial inscriptions. These are commemorative, not didactic signs, and they focus more on the destruction of Jewish heritage rather than explaining the circumstances of Jews in the the city for centuries. Still, they are a welcome start, and an important recognition of the fate of tens of thousands of the city's Jews during the Holocaust.

There are three easy things that can be done almost immediately to reverse this situation. They are

1) the preparation and distribution of reliable guides and maps locating Jewish sites,

2) the preparation of on-line resources with guides, maps, histories and illustrations,

3) the installation of informative signs identifying the location of Jewish historic sites in Lviv.

Even though the Jewish past of Lviv is not unified and Jews themselves were often divided (most dramatically in the conflicts that led to the murder of Progressive Rabbi Abraham Kohn in 1848), it is important today that Jewish heritage take on a unified identity, so that all sites and program can be promoted and developed together, and that each historic site in some way is used to promote the others. In short, Lviv’s Jewish heritage sites needs to be unified into a route that tells a coherent narrative. For the more interested and more discerning, there can be series of routes that delve a more deeply into the history, religion and art of Jewish Lviv. The concept is not difficult, and it has been pioneered already in many cities for many reasons and even in some cities for Jewish past.

In some cities, such as Krakow (Poland) some of what is in the guidebooks has also been created as signage on the streets themselves. I include here photos from Krakow, Poland, where since the mid-1990s there have been many efforts to both identify and reclaim Jewish historic sites. There have been guidebooks and annotated maps, the most recent a highly detailed map and guide of Jewish Kazimierz written by Jakub Nowakowski and produced by the Galicia Jewish Museum). In Krakow, the signage route for Jewish Kazimierz is just one of many designated historic routes in the city (there is a University Route, a Royal Route, etc.). Thus Jewish history is integrated into the overall history of the city and its populations. The same should be done in Lviv.


Jewish heritage site signs in Krakow, Poland

Happily, there is some movement to achieve these tasks in Lviv. The "Lviv Interactive" section of the website of the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe is expediting the inclusion of information about Jewish heritage sites. According to the Deputy Mayor of Lviv, the city is developing a comprehensive signage program for historic sites, too. But if they decide to install all the signs at once,I still expect a long wait.

This blog will keep you posted...