23 July 2020 Jewish News
www.jewishnews.co.uk
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Virtual study / Venice experience / Educational trip / Yiddish scheme / Diaspora News
Soviet Shoah experience goes online for Israeli pupils Israeli schoolchildren learning about the Holocaust will soon be able to visit Russia virtually to understand how Soviet Jews both fought and suffered under the Nazis. Most Israeli secondary school pupils travel to former Nazi camps across Europe, most notably Auschwitz-Birkenau, but a pioneering team from the Israel-based Beit Lohamei Hagetaot – Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum, came up with an online alternative seminar, prompted by the lack of travel during lockdown. It is a joint collaboration between the museum and Genesis Philanthropy Group (GPG), and organisers hope to incorporate the story of the Holocaust of Soviet Jewry into Israeli learning. The six-hour programme, specially tailored for groups of up to 20, will cover the heroism of Jews who fought the Nazis, explore the meanings of memory, and prompt discussions about awareness, activism and communal involvement. Using a mixture of lectures, workshops and films, it will give an overview of the Holocaust in Soviet territories with a guided tour of the museum’s relevant exhibitions. Included in the learning will be a Bielski
Secondary school students will learn about the heroism of Jews who fought the Nazis
Brothers workshop, dedicated to the legendary family of Jewish partisans, and a session on heroes hailed by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. There will also be a portable gaming workshop, described as “visual escape room sets, which use quest-room methods for exploring the individual life stories of five inspiring characters that lived in
Visitors will experience life in the 16th century
Europe’s best klezmer musicians and Yiddish scholars have been told not to cancel their ticket for this year’s Yiddish Summer Weimar in Germany, with organisers still determined to put on a show. A reduced selection of artists will take part in an array of events, including poetry readings, workshops in Yiddish and outdoor chamber music concerts, although the dancers will be missing this year, owing to coronavirus restrictions. Attendees will be asked to observe safety regulations as they enjoy a programme ranging from an exploration
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Boston’s Jewish community has unveiled a monument to local coronavirus victims in a ceremony streamed live to hundreds of families. A memorial stone and two granite benches were dedicated in the grounds of the Baker Street Memorial Park, a complex of 42 Jewish cemeteries. One bench is for those who died without loved ones, the other for cemetery staff for their work in extraordinary circumstances.
the Soviet Union territories during the Holocaust”. By September, Beit Lohamei Hagetaot says it will have developed virtual tours of three of its 15 thematic halls, and offer a guided online visit with 10-15 “discussion stations” to broaden the learning experience, augmented by original artwork and video testimonials.
Venice Jewish museum restoration
A YIDDISH SUMMER
WORLD NEWS IN BRIEF
Venice’s Jewish Museum is to get an innovative makeover that will give visitors a snapshot of the city’s 16th century Jewish Ghetto. Overcrowding, cramped living quarters and a lack of hygiene meant that life was tough but safe within the confines, and tourists will soon get a sense of it at the Jewish Museum in Campo del Ghetto Nuovo, the square at the heart of the ghetto. Visitors will enter a flat located under the historic German Synagogue, which will be rebuilt based on the model of the Jewish houses of the 16th century. “Tourists will realise how difficult the life of the Jews was,” said historian David Landau, who is overseeing the project. “The ghetto was both prison and pro-
of European Yiddish wedding music in 1920s New York to a transnational song evening featuring works by poets as diverse as Mordechai Gebirtig, Georges Brassens and Bob Dylan. There will be a “musical dialogue” between four leading representatives of the international Klezmer scene, as well as concerts in the Thuringian capital of Erfurt and Johann Sebastian Bach’s hometown of Eisenach. Founder Dr Alan Bern said: “Our challenge this year was to design a programme that continues that tradition while staying healthy and safe. We think we’ve succeeded, and the strong, positive response we’ve received from artists and participants is very gratifying.”
tection. As long as residents remained inside, no one could harm them.” The museum incorporates some of the city’s most important and ancient synagogues as well as Jewish dwellings dating back to the start of the Renaissance. Amid the complex is Venice’s oldest synagogue, the German Synagogue, which was built in 1528, along with the Canton Synagogue, built in 1532. The Spanish and Levantine synagogues, also built in the mid-16th century, lie just outside. “Residents came out of their lodgings and, through internal passages, they climbed into the synagogues,” said Landau. “They were much higher, more ventilated, and better illuminated than their homes.”
Jewish leaders in Buenos Aires were granted an audience with Argentine President Alberto Fernandez in the run-up to the anniversary of the deadly 1994 bombing of the Jewish centre in the city. In 2015, Jewish prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who had been investigating the case for several years, was found dead in mysterious circumstances just hours before he was due to reveal evidence of a state cover-up in court.
A far-right activist is set to do jail time for insulting a German Jewish leader after the country’s highest court denied his appeal. Sascha Krolzig, who heads the small Die Rechte party, will serve a six-month sentence for calling the head of the Jewish community in Herford-Detmold an ‘insolent Jewish functionary’, praising the SS and demanding a boycott of Jewish organisations on a news website.
Prosecutors are seeking to shelve a book by a Jewish comedian about Sweden’s wartime collaboration with the Nazis. Lawyers say the book’s cover, which shows a tiger in the national colours of blue and yellow, infringes on the copyright of a war-time propaganda campaign, which is now owned by a museum. The author, Aron Flam, said it was satirical and therefore protected by freedom of speech.
MASA ISRAEL REMAINS ON TRACK TO CONTINUE English-speaking postgraduates and young professionals can now enrol on a new fourmonth educational stay in Israel while continuing to do their jobs remotely. Masa Remote Israel is to let successful applicants, or fellows, move to Tel Aviv for four months while working their current jobs in their home country, with Masa’s educational and social programme scheduled around the fellow’s job and time zone, letting them
get in a full working day. The programme, for which scholarships are available, is aimed at postgraduates aged under 30 from Englishspeaking countries such as the UK, US and Canada, and fellows are being allowed into Israel, when other students are not. Fellows will have to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival, during which they will receive orientations, Hebrewlanguage course and educational seminars.
Representative body of German Jews celebrates 70th anniversary The representative body of post-war German Jewry celebrated its 70-year anniversary this week with one eye on an even bigger anniversary next year. Reflecting on the fact the Central Council of Jews (CCJ) in Germany held its inaugural meeting in Frankfurt on 19 July 1950, establishing what was intended to be a provisional set-up, community leaders said Jewish life in Germany today was once again vibrant. At its inception, the CCJ’s main task was to support the Jewish families who had managed to survive the Holocaust and to facilitate their emigration, yet CCJ leader Josef
Schuster said many families surprisingly wanted to stay in Germany. Within weeks of the war ending, the ‘Israeli Cultural Community’ was founded in Munich, the first of several steps marking the revival of Jewish communities in Germany, which was divided between East and West during the Cold War. “For a long time, it was very problematic, also in Jewish circles, to stand up and say that you’ve consciously chosen a life in Germany,” said Schuster, adding that when legendary CCJ leader Werner Nachmann began proudly proclaiming the return of Jewish life in Germany, he faced criticism from Israel.
German Jewish leader Heinz Galinski in 1967
Next year, Jewish communities in Germany will celebrate a far larger anniversary, marking 1,700 years of Jewish life on what is now German soil. The CCJ said it would seek to strike a tone balanced between past, present and future.