MultiMemo: Multidirectional Memory

MultiMemo’s point of departure is the troubling legacy of WWII in East Central Europe (ECE). The project focuses on sites and practices of ‘mutliple exclusion’ with respect to remembrance that are problematic or/and overlooked because the trauma of the Holocaust overlaps with other intricate social, historical or contemporary issues. Such sites in ECE also represent a form of legacy of both totalitarian regimes in modern history – National Socialism and Communism. The intersectional approach proposed by the project is relevant now more than ever, when we are experiencing – again, after almost eight decades of peace – a war in East Central Europe, in Ukraine, resulting in massive refugee and humanitarian crises.

The project is funded by the European Union (CERV-2022-REM) and involves nine European partners: FestivALT, UMF, Zapomniane Foundation, JCC Warsaw, the Formy Common Foundation, the Foundation for the Documentation of Jewish Cemeteries, CEJI – A Jewish Contribution to an Inclusive Europe, the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg  and the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg.

OUR EVENTS

1. KICK-OFF – WARSAW

The first meeting of the MultiMemo project took place on February 19-20, 2023 in Warsaw. Together with the partners of the consortium we discussed the project goals and approach and presented them to a larger audience.

We started the event with walks around two Jewish cemeteries of Warsaw, Okopowa and Bródno, focused on the topic of approach to remembrance, the concept of green commemorations and various types of commemoration. Then, the event was focused on project planning, communication and coordination of work for the upcoming months between the partners. The purpose of this meeting was also to integrate project partners and set an efficient and clear cooperation model.

→ Read the Event Description (WP 1)

2. PARTICIPATORY MEMORY WORKSHOP – PAWŁÓWKA

3. POLYPHONIES OF MEMORY. INCLUSIVE MEMORY OF WARSAW APRIL 16-23, 2023

4. A WALK AROUND THE JEWISH CEMETERY IN BRÓDNO AND PRESENTATION OF ITS RENOVATION PROJECT – WARSAW

On April 23, 2023, another event was held as part of the MultiMemo project, organized by the partner organization Formy Wspólne. The meeting concerned the cemetery in Bródno – the oldest Jewish necropolis in Warsaw, and the conceptual project of its renovation, namely the exhibition of about 40,000 matzevot, which are currently decaying in the heaps in the central part of the cemetery. The first part of the meeting was a walk around the cemetery and getting acquainted with the extraordinary and tragic history of this place, as well as with its actual state. Thanks to this, the participants could better understand the assumptions of the project presented by the architects of the Common Forms Foundation in the second part of the event at the Museum of Warsaw’s Praga.

In addition to the residents, the event was attended by activists from the Forum for Dialogue foundation, researchers from the department of anthropology and cultural studies, engineers, architects, and representatives of the Jewish Community from Warsaw and Sweden.

It was the first event organized by the Formy Wspólne foundations as part of the MultiMemo: Multidirectional Memory: Remembering for Social Justice project, in which we had the honor to participate as partners.

→ Read the Event Description (WP 27)

5. PARTICIPATORY MEMORY WORKSHOP – ZAMOŚĆ 10-11.05.2023

In May, a ceremony was held in Zamość to commemorate the burial place of the Jewish family of Mendel, Chajka and Niura in Zrąb, murdered by a German gendarme in their home.

The event was preceded by educational workshops and workshops with students of the 2nd Secondary School in Zamość, during which we prepared a wooden marker in the shape of a matzeva with an inscription along with the names of the victims written by the workshop participants.
After the workshops, we went with the youth to the burial place of a Jewish family in Zrąb, where the ceremony of marking this place with a wooden matzeva took place.

→ Read the Event Description (WP 32)

6. STILL STANDING — MONUMENT IN MOTION 16.05.2023

7. MEMORY POLES. STRATEGIES OF REBUILDING THE IDENTITY OF THE BRÓDNO JEWISH CEMETERY – 18.06.2023

On June 18, 2023, another event was organized by the partner organization Fundacja Documentacji Cmentarzy Żydowskich, as part of the MultiMemo project, in which we had the honor to participate as partners. This is the first event  “Memory poles. Strategies of rebuilding the identity of the Bródno Jewish Cemetery” opened a series of workshops for the local community around the Jewish Cemetery in Bródno.

The aim of the workshop is to restore the memory of the Bródno cemetery and to involve residents, activists, social organizations and local authorities in this process.

During the event, there was a walk of two large cemeteries on opposite banks of the Vistula River, whose stories are diametrically opposed. The cemetery in Bródno, almost completely destroyed by the post-war regime, was forgotten and deprived of any signs of a cemetery. Today, pioneering research and commemorative activities are carried out there. The second cemetery at Okopowa Street is constantly used by the local Jewish community, and at the same time it is visited by crowds of tourists and pilgrims.

During the tour, the directors of both cemeteries familiarized us with the history of these places. Comparing both cemeteries, we talked about how to restore the cultural character of the necropolis in Bródno.

→ Read the Event Description (WP 31)

8. MEMORIZATION OF THE RINGELBLUM ARCHIVES – WORKSHOPS AND DISCUSSION ON COLLECTIVE MEMORY – 18.06.2023

On June 18, 2023, another event was held as part of the MultiMemo project, organized by the partner organization Formy Wspólne, as part of the MultiMemo project: Multidirectional Memory: Remembering Social Justice, in which we had the honor to participate as partners.

The purpose of the event was to gather everyone – individuals, representatives of the administration and social organizations who contributed to the creation of the monument, as well as local residents – to start the next stage of cooperation and discussion on the future of the Memorial and plans for educational and cultural activities to maintain the memory of the archive and its creators – the Oneg Shabbat group.
The event began with joint work – tidying up the area around the monument, and then finishing the planting of the hedge – the last and so far unrealized element of commemoration, which recreated the basement where the archive was found. The second part of the event took place at the Muranów Station, where the creators of the project told about the history of its creation, followed by a discussion.

→ Read the Event Description (WP 29)

9. FestivALT –  23.06 – 2.07.2023

FestivALT – a 10-day festival of Jewish art, activism and education, is another event carried out as part of the MultiMemo project. The program included 24 events: performances, discussions, urban walks, workshops, exhibitions, created by authors and artists from Central and Eastern Europe, America and Canada.

The festival was themed around the notion of intersectional memory with a particular focus on “doykait” – a Yiddish word that can be understood as “Hereness” or the “here and now”. It was an idea popularized during the interwar periods by the Bund (Jewish Socialist Party) and it was most commonly connected to the struggle for Jewish rights and cultural autonomy wherever Jews were living. For the Bund, this meant advocating for the strengthening of Central and Eastern European Jewry and firmly claiming their homeland in the Diaspora, rather than being separated out and relegated to Israel. For FestivALT we used the notion of “Doykait” as advocative lens for the contemporary intersectional Polish Jewish Identity.

→ Read the Event Description (WP 15)

10. EXHIBITION OPENING: LANDSCAPE ARCHIVE – 25/08/2023

As part of Knowledge Mobilization, our partner organization Zapomniane Foundation organized an exhibition on places with difficult heritage – in particular: uncommemorated burial places of Holocaust victims, which are objects of multiple exclusion – as places of the history of Jews and Roma, as burials of civilians, including women and children, etc. The exhibition was presented at the Austrian Cultural Forum as part of the Singer’s Warsaw Festival from August 25, 2023 to September 8, 2023. The exhibition was based on artistic research of these burial places conducted by the Zapomniane Foundation. As they studied the landscape with increasing care, they discovered that places that seemed empty were actually full of traces of events that had happened years ago. The exhibition explores these traces, as well as the new artistic tools and technical possibilities and associated new research methods that have opened up the field to study topography without interfering with it in the way traditional archeology does, providing digital data on the knowledge archived in the landscape. The exhibition was an attempt to propose a new approach to commemoration, more interdisciplinary and intersectional, combining art, activism and academia.
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→ Read the Event Description (WP 2)

11. PARTICIPATORY MEMORY WORKSHOP – KAŁUSZYN 17.10.2023

On October 17 in Kałuszyn, the Zapomniane Foundation conducted participatory commemoration workshops, the topic of which was commemorating the Jewish history of the city, the Jewish cemetery and the mass grave of Holocaust victims.

The workshops were an attempt to transform the innovative commemorative practice we created – green commemorations – into a participatory event. The event began with a screening of the film “Ukos Światła”, and was followed by a meeting with the descendants of Kałuszyn Jews, Wiktoria Kurtz and her father Artur Kurtz. This was Wiktoria’s third visit to the school in her efforts to build long-term relationships with the local community, but for her father, the son of Kałuszyn Jews, it was the first visit to the city and Poland. They shared their family history, talked about who they were and what their intentions were (restoring the memory of the Jewish past in Kałuszyn) and talked to children who could ask questions and build relationships with them
The aim of the workshops was to involve local youth – 7th grade students of the Primary School in Kałuszyn – in the process of long-term involvement in building and cultivating local Jewish memory. The third part of the workshop was a conversation with landscape architect Natalia Budnik, who, together with Victoria Kurtz, presented to the youth the idea of marking the boundaries of the Jewish cemetery and mass grave with plants (in line with the idea of “green commemoration”). Together they presented the idea and brought to school plants selected for planting in the cemetery. The children learned about the plants, could touch them and ask questions. After the workshops, the plants were planted in pots on the school premises so that the children could care for them throughout the winter and plant them in the cemetery in the spring.

The idea of the workshops was to expand the idea of “green commemorations” and develop a methodology in which it can be a longer process involving the local community. Thanks to successful cooperation with the school, children will take care of the plants until spring, when they will plant them in a designated place in the cemetery.

→ Read the Event Description (WP 33)

12. PARTICIPATORY MEMORY WORKSHOP – ŁĘCZNA 19.10.2023

On October 19, 2023 in Łęczna, the Zapomniane Foundation conducted workshops for young people around the burial place of approximately 1,000 Jews from Łęczna. The educational workshops were aimed at involving and engaging school youth in caring for the burial site and encouraging them to become part of the process of preparing the commemoration.
The participatory workshops consisted of two parts. The first part was prepared by landscape architect Natalia Budnik, who created a design for developing the area around the planned monument by using greenery. Referring to the concept of green commemorations, she introduced the youth to her way of thinking and her concept, and then the participants planted plants together with her around the burial site and the future monument. The second part of the workshops was cooperation with the monument conservator Magda Olszowska, who was the co-author of the project and the designer of the monument in Łęczna. The workshops were based on her original idea of creating “memory stones” using “marble flour” and silicone molds specially created for the classes. After introducing the youth to the meaning of pebbles and the custom of placing them at graves in Judaism, the youth made white pebbles with their own hands under her supervision. Stones were prepared for the commemoration ceremony so that the youth could place them at the burial site in accordance with Jewish tradition.
The workshops took place a few weeks before the commemoration ceremony (November 7, 2023), in which young people and residents of Łęczna, clergy of three denominations, local authorities, representatives of various organizations, descendants of Jews from Łęczna and the Jewish community from Lublin participated. The youth could see the results of their work and place the stones they made near the monument.

→ Read the Event Description (WP 30)

13. FESTIVAL ZBLIŻENIA GDAŃSK 06/09/2023 – 12/11/2023

Zbliżenia Kultur Foundation is another organization that took part in the MultiMemo project, implementing a rich program of the 11th edition of the Zbliżenia Jewish Culture Festival.
The festival program, in addition to proposals introducing and promoting Jewish culture, tradition and art, included events focusing on Polish-Jewish-German relations, the position of women in the modern world and the relations and interpenetration of Jewish, Polish and German cultures.
As part of the project, the Zoom Culture Foundation conducted, among others: the following events:

1. Radio play “The Devil Has Dwelled in Europe”.
2. A concert of original poetry “Kinot” by Jarosław Lipszyc dedicated to contemporary Jewish poetry.
3. Concert by Mari K. “Di szajchesen – connections”.
4. Lecture “Around the Great Synagogue” – meeting with the author of the book under the same title, Jacek Bielak.
5. Anti-discrimination workshops dedicated to children from Gdańsk Children’s Homes.
6. Workshops for students of the Secondary School of Fine Arts in Gdańsk and children from Gdańsk Children’s Homes in the New Synagogue in Gdańsk.
   7.Celebrations on the occasion of the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht – commemoration of the pogrom of the Jewish community committed by German Nazis in November 1938.

→ Read the Event Description (WP 17)

14. BRESLAU/WROCŁAW 1933-1949: STUDIES ON THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE SHOAH

As part of the MultiMemo project, our partner organization Urban Memory Foundation organized a series of three events in Wrocław on November 23 and 24, 2023, related to the premiere of the book “Breslau/Wrocław 1933 – 1949: Studies on the topography of the Holocaust”, touching on topics related to the project. The series included: 1) a scientific session, 2) a public session as part of the OP_BOOKS series and 3) a city walk around Jewish places related to the history of the Holocaust discussed in the book. UMF, together with its partners, the Dresden University of Technology, the Department of Jewish Studies of the University of Wrocław, the OP ENHEIM Foundation and the German-Polish Foundation for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, invited the academic community and the general public of Wrocław to a series of meetings with editors Maria Luft and prof. Tim Buchen and the book’s co-authors: Annelies Augustyns, Karolina Jara, Agnieszka Jabłońska and Daniel Ljunggren.

In the book, which was the focus of our series of events, the authors take a new look at the history of the Holocaust in Wrocław. The interdisciplinary team selected various perspectives and contexts in which exclusion, persecution and extermination occurred in urban space and reconstructed places and spheres of Jewish life: work and housing, religion and politics, art and culture. The effects of the Holocaust were also examined in retrospect – for example in relation to cemeteries, city cartography, memories of Wrocław or archival sources regarding the Holocaust. The talks during the series of events concerned, among others: the importance of topography and the adopted unusual time frame of research, 1933–1949, as opposed to the usual look at the history of Wrocław before and after 1945. The adopted perspective allowed us to notice the interconnection of worlds, the pre- and post-war ones, and to notice the continuity of some processes, such as functioning of the school in the building at the current Żelazna Street, liquidation of the Jewish cemetery at Gwarna Street, or contemporary challenges related to the preservation and commemoration of some places, such as the area of the New Synagogue at Łąkowa Street, where the 19th-century foundations of the building are still located.

The book is the result of several years of research work by an international interdisciplinary team of 22 people from 6 countries, conducted in 2018–2021 by the Dresden University of Technology. It was published in October 2023 by Neofelis Verlag, and the texts were written in English or German. Link to publication. Link to the photo reportage from the public book launch.

→ Read the Event Description (WP 5)